Lisa Gevelber on the success of the Google Career Certificates

Innovators share ideas with WorkingNation Overheard at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021
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Grow with Google is our initiative to ensure economic opportunity for everyone,” says Lisa Gevelber, founder of the program. “We’re teaching people the skills they need for in-demand, high-growth, high-paying jobs.” She notes that since the 2017 launch, 50,000 have graduated. Of those, 46% come from the lowest income tertile in the country and 53% come from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in technology.

WorkingNation sat down with Gevelber at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021 in Beverly Hills as part of our #WorkingNationOverheard interview series. With Charting a New Course as the guiding theme, thought leaders and innovators shared ideas about the changing economy, worker development, education, tech, philanthropy, and more.

Gevelber says many community stakeholders are driving the adoption of the certificate training programs to help prepare local residents for good careers beginning as early as high school.

She offers the example of the Anaheim Union High School District in California. “They have almost 2,000 high school students who are going to be doing the Google Career Certificates as part of their classroom experience. We’re working directly also with Cypress College, which is the one right next to the Anaheim school system, for them to issue college credits for those students, as well.

Gevelber also tells WorkingNation that Google has made a $15 million commitment to expand economic opportunity in the Latino community through its Latino Founders Fund. “It’s all non-dilutive capital to help them get started. But maybe even more exciting than the capital, they get mentorship from the business community as well as technical mentorship directly from Google. We will soon be officially bringing new entrepreneurs into this program.”

She adds, “It’s based on the success we’ve had with our Black Founders Fund in which we invested $5 million in Google capital. Those founders raised an additional $50 million on the back of the $5 million we gave them. We’re seeing a real catalytic effect of Google’s investment in these entrepreneurs.”

Click here to learn more about Grow with Google.

Follow the continuing conversation on social media:#WorkingNationOverheard #WorkingNation #MIGlobal

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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.