Gen Z teens need to take the education and career path that’s right for them, according to Laura Telander Graf, senior director of public relations and thought leadership, ECMC Group.
WorkingNation sat down with Telander Graf at SXSW EDU 2023 in Austin.
ECMC Group created a campaign – Question the Quo – to help young students explore their options. “Through our work across the postsecondary education landscape, we found that there was a lack of information about programs beyond the four-year degree. The four-year degree works wonderfully for a lot of students. For a lot of students, that just isn’t the way that they want to learn after high school. This campaign is all about empowering them and really broadening that aperture about the many pathways to financial and career success,” explains Telander Graf.
She says that surveys conducted by her organization have revealed students have concerns about their post-high school plans. “While more than 85% of high schoolers feel pressure to go the four-year path, less than half want to do so.”
“We’re also finding that this decision of what they’re going to do after high school weighs on them quite heavily. Eighty percent of high schoolers – ninth grade through 12th grade – are thinking about their path after high school every week. More than half think about it every single day. This is a big decision.”
She notes the pressure experienced by underserved students, in particular, is self-directed.
Learn more about ECMC Group.
Learn more about Question the Quo.
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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.