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Need cybersecurity or data analytics skills training? IBM can help

A conversation with Justina Nixon-Saintil, VP & Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, IBM
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In this week’s Work in Progress podcast, IBM’s Justina Nixon-Saintil, VP and Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, joins me to discuss the company’s expansion of its free SkillsBuild jobs and career training program.

“At IBM, we believe everyone should have the chance to succeed. What’s really motivating us is how technology is changing society,” explains Nixon-Saintil.

Just last week, the company announced that it is growing SkillsBuild by partnering with more than 30 additional nonprofits, governments, and other agencies around the world with a goal of providing 500,000 workers from underserved populations with new skills to help them land jobs in in-demand fields, including cybersecurity and data analytics.

“When you think about the future of automation—how people are going to recover from the pandemic—there’s the sense of urgency to make sure that everyone has the skills they need to be successful and move into meaningful jobs,” she adds.

Nixon-Saintil says the coalition—which now totals 90 organizations—will work to help underserved populations such as veterans, women, minorities, refugees, and unemployed young adults. “We believe we have to take big and bold steps to make sure that we provide access to tech skills, to workplace learning skills, regardless of anyone’s background,” Nixon-Saintil tells me.

In addition to the training, the initiative will help make a connection between the newly-trained job seekers and potential employers.

ManpowerGroup is the company that is providing the employment opportunities for those who attained the credentials and badges from the IBM SkillsBuild platform. Manpower will bring those opportunities to the forefront. We do know that there is demand.”

Nixon-Saintil and I discuss what success looks like to IBM.

“Number one, it’s our responsibility to make sure that we are not leaving anyone behind especially as technology and innovation and automation is taking place in society. So, we want to make sure that we are moving people forward, making sure they have the skills they need, and making sure that they can move into meaningful jobs. It’s not enough to just have people registered on the platform.”

“In the long run, we would love to know that people continue to reskill and be upskilled because we believe continuous learning is how you become more and more successful in the future. Those are our measures of success.”

You can listen to the full podcast here, or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 189: Justina Nixon-Saintil, IBM, VP & Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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.