Jamie-Dimon

Seeing the problems in our education system in preparing students for today’s jobs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon has made addressing them a major focus of his company’s philanthropic efforts.

“When I say out loud, ‘50% of inner-city school kids do not graduate high school,’ that is a national catastrophe. We should be ringing the alarm bells. It’s not fair,” Dimon told Business Insider in an interview Tuesday.

Dimon went on to say that business and civic society have to work together to address the high unemployment rate among youth in inner cities.

“We have done a terrible job training our kids at high school, at vocational school, community school, or even college, to get out with a job,” Dimon reportedly said at an event last week.

To help lead the charge in addressing this youth career crisis, Dimon’s bank is investing $75 million into a New Skills for Youth initiative — $20 million of which being granted to 10 U.S. states that are implementing long-term career readiness education programs that align with the needs of area employers. Last week, Dimon announced $6 million will go toward an initiative to connect career and technical education (CTE) schools in the South Bronx to employers in New York City.

SEE ALSO: Do Not Underestimate the Importance of Career Technical Education

The money in the South Bronx program will go towards securing the necessary education and training to secure middle skill jobs in three growing industries: transportation, distribution and logistics, healthcare, and information technology; building a new apprenticeship model; and support the development of a high quality data system to measure and track the expansion of services and opportunities for work based learning, internships and community based efforts that match young people to career pathways.

SEE ALSO: Why CEOs Are Looking at Third-Graders to Help Solve the Skills Gap Problem

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.