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Jamie Merisotis, president & CEO, Lumina Foundation discusses getting more students a degree or credential of value for economic prosperity
Jamie Merisotis, president & CEO, Lumina Foundation discusses getting more students a degree or credential of value for economic prosperity
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‘Education should remain accessible, valuable, and align with today’s workforce needs’

A conversation with Jamie Merisotis, president & CEO, Lumina Foundation
By Ramona Schindelheim
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In this episode of Work in Progress, I’m joined by Jamie Merisotis, president & CEO of Lumina Foundation, to discuss the foundation’s goal to help more Americans obtain a credential beyond high school, one that leads to lifelong economic stability and prosperity.

One of the core principals of Lumina Foundation’s mission is the idea that “education should remain accessible, valuable, and align with today’s workforce needs.”

In 2008, Lumina set a goal of 60% of working-age adults with college degrees, certificates, or industry-recognized certifications by 2025. Today, the number of adults with one of those credentials of value has risen from 38% to 55%.

“It’s one of the greatest social progress examples that we can see in the last 20 years,” says Merisotis. “That’s led to literally millions of adults being able to get more education training, get new and better jobs in their field, earn more money, and, in general, become better citizens and participants in their community.”

While Lumina celebrates the progress made over the last two decades, Merisotis says the demand for talent in the American labor force has never been higher, with most jobs soon requiring some form of post-high school credential. He points to several studies, including one from Georgetown University forecasting that 72% of jobs by 2031 will require a post-high school credential of some type.

So, Lumina has set a new goal: 75% of adults with a credential of value by 2040. Whether its a college degree or an industry-recognized credential, it needs to ultimately lead to a career with financial stability.

Lumina’s new goal focuses on increasing access, completion, and ensuring credentials have real value in terms of higher wages, career growth, and adaptability.

“The truth is you do earn more and you have more stability and greater long-term security and ultimately prosperity if you get higher credentials. But it doesn’t mean that everyone should start aspiring to a bachelor’s degree. It could be that they need this industry-recognized credential to get them into the labor force or to get them onto the ladder of opportunity.

“What’s really important, in our view, is that people are able to earn family-sustaining wages that allow them to have stability in their lives, but that also gives them a chance to continue to grow.

“We believe that these shorter term credentials, the quality ones, certainly do provide that. The ones that add the wage benefits, et cetera, do that. And at the same time, they create pathways for further learning, which leads to greater advancement,” Merisotis tells me.

In the podcast, we discuss some of the challenges that still exist for Americans trying to obtain those credentials that lead to economic prosperity.

“Access is a combination of things. It’s like a three-legged stool of things that create barriers to access – finance, social, and academic. We tend to focus a lot on the finance side – because costs are high – but we tend not to focus on the real-life circumstances of the students or their shortcomings academically.

“For these students who are low-income, or rural, or coming from communities of color, creating more assurance that the process itself is simpler and easier for them to get through, so that admissions isn’t difficult, is really important.”

Merisotis says that for students who feel marginalized, there needs to be more awareness that there is tutoring, mentoring, and other supports that provide “opportunities for them to be successful when they get in, but also to help them get through.”

Merisotis and I also go deeper into what makes a credential valuable in today’s workforce – yes, we do talk about AI – and how Lumina Foundation intends to achieve its goal of 75% of working-age adults having those credentials in our conversation.

I encourage you to listen!

You can listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 358: Jamie Merisotis, President & CEO, Lumina Foundation
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

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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.

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