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Lumina Foundation awards grant to WorkingNation to develop powerful stories about the future of work

The grant marks Lumina Foundation’s first large-scale media commitment to highlighting the changing world of work in the United States.
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Lumina Foundation has awarded a $750,000 grant to Los Angeles-based nonprofit campaign WorkingNation to support original video and digital journalism that increases awareness and understanding about the future of work.

The two-year grant is Lumina’s first media grant award for this kind of storytelling. Lumina is a private, independent foundation dedicated to increasing the share of Americans with college degrees, workforce certificates, industry certifications, and other credentials beyond high school.

WorkingNation, operating in partnership with its 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor, the California Community Foundation, will use the grant to support a series of mini-documentaries and digital storytelling that highlight post-high school education as a lifelong antidote to restlessness about the evolving nature of work.

WorkingNation launched in September 2016 and in its first year has produced a series of original content that explains how automation and other factors are affecting the U.S. workforce, how the pace of change is moving faster than ever anticipated, and what can and is being done to keep Americans working.

WorkingNation has assembled a talented editorial team comprised of network journalists with years of experience in production and hard news.

The next phase of original content funded by the Lumina grant will cover subjects including the hollowing out of the American middle class, the importance of lifelong postsecondary education and training amid economic upheaval, and the effects of technological shifts on the U.S. workforce.

Tri-C fire academy cadets Dwayne Johnson, Nicholas Giavonnette and Savon Collins. Photo – Jonathan Barenboim

Additionally, WorkingNation will highlight pioneering organizations and initiatives that are training American workers for the future of work and emphasizing education beyond high school as a lifelong endeavor.

“WorkingNation is telling solutions-oriented stories that benefit all of us like no one else,” said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation. “These stories highlight how much the nation’s system of educating people beyond high school still needs to evolve to prepare Americans for a rapidly changing economy.”

RELATED STORY: Lumina Foundation’s Jamie Merisotis and WorkingNation’s Joan Lynch appear at The Atlantic’s Future of Work 2017 summit

“Lumina Foundation is the country’s leader in advocating for postsecondary training and education as the avenue to a sustainable future,” said Art Bilger, founder and CEO of WorkingNation. “We are thrilled to be working closely with Lumina to develop content that shows the American public how a rapidly changing U.S. economy is making the need for postsecondary training and re-skilling even more imperative than ever before.”

To date, WorkingNation has released the animated mini-documentary “Slope of the Curve” illustrating how advances in technology and others factors are contributing to a growing skills gap in the United States.

The mini-documentary series “FutureProof” takes a look at how companies such as Toyota are equipping employees with skills that won’t be automated.

The “Do Something Awesome” series shines a light on programs across the country working to prepare Americans for jobs of the future.

Join the Conversation: What workforce development programs do you think WorkingNation should focus on in 2018? Tell us your ideas on our Facebook page.

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.