As more and more organizations and individuals embrace the idea of climate-resiliency, all jobs are going to require people have an understanding about sustainability and this can create new jobs and redefine the way we work, says Michelle Armstrong, president of Ares Charitable Foundation, which “strives to accelerate equality of economic opportunity” through its grantmaking.
Armstrong joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for an interview for WorkingNation Overheard at JFF Horizons in Washington, D.C.
Ares Charitable Foundation’s grantmaking is supporting the CREST (Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow) jobs-creation initiative with partners Jobs for the Future (JFF) and World Resources Institute (WRI). The five-year venture “aims to close the gap between the demand for a skilled workforce for green jobs and the number of people ready for these opportunities.”
Armstrong recounts the impetus for CREST, “I was watching the news and seeing all of the legislation that was out there on the table for consideration, particularly around infrastructure and all of the opportunities that were imagined to come along with this legislation.
“But as I was looking and reading and listening and talking to people, what I wasn’t seeing was a focus on how do we get people ready to take on those jobs? How do we not only create the opportunity, but what are the pathways for access so that people can actually be ready not just to enter the jobs, but to retain the positions and to be successful in them and to help move the needle?”
She explains, “At the heart of CREST, it’s about driving away economic disparities, creating opportunities including for populations who have historically been left out of green jobs – women, people of color, people who live in rural communities, people of lower socioeconomic status. How do you create access so that they can actually enter and take advantage of those opportunities?”
Learn mor about CREST in our WorkingNation digital magazine, Climate and Careers.
Learn more about Ares Charitable Foundation.
WorkingNation Overheard at JFF Horizons 2024 was made possible through funding from EnGen.
© Copyright 2024 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation
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.
