Pete Stavros on giving employees more ownership in a company and improving diversity

Innovators share ideas with WorkingNation Overheard at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021
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“We all know what needs to happen, which is to diversify the workforce up and down the chain across all functions,” says Pete Stavros, who is co-head of Americas Private Equity at KKR and is also co-chair of the firm’s Global Inclusion and Diversity Council. He says the Council is working internally, as well as with the firm’s portfolio companies, “to create a sense of belonging for all employees, independent of race, sexual orientation, or gender.”

WorkingNation sat down with Stavros 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.

Stavros says diversity is the portfolio companies is important. “We feel like we can influence that. It’s kind of like when you invest in a business and maybe their operations aren’t perfect. We look at it and we say, ‘Hey, that’s an opportunity.’ Doesn’t need to be perfect Day One but there’s so much research. It’s common sense that diverse teams make better decisions.”

Additionally, Stavros is co-founder of Ownership Works, a nonprofit on a mission to “transform how ownership is distributed within corporations. We partner with private and public companies to implement innovative shared ownership programs that make every employee an owner and honor the collective effort behind a company’s success.”

Stavros says making all employees owners helps create financial equality. “The concentrated nature of equity ownership is underpinning a lot of problems in society. If you look at the Federal Reserve data on household wealth, by a mile, the biggest driver of wealth inequality is the ownership of corporate equities.”

“If you look inside of a company – whether it’s public, private-equity owned, family-owned – all the ownership and all the wealth creation potential is up in those top couple of layers of a company. It’s the C-suite and their direct reports. And as hard as we are all trying to diversify all of our companies as fast as we can across the country, it’s going to take time. And right now, all the wealth creation is hung up in those layers that are not diverse.”

Stavros says, “If you look across all of those issues – wealth inequality, racial wealth gap, racial inequity, the lack of financial literacy among American adults, and the lack of employee engagement—all of those can be impacted by ownership.”

“We’re trying to start a movement to prove workers are better off with this model. Not just they generate some more wealth, but they’re more engaged on the job. They’re happier.”

Click here to learn more about KKR.
Click here to learn more about Ownership Works.

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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.