Podcast-Mic

For the majority of young adults who enroll in college, the expected outcome is simple: a good career that will earn them a good living.

But once you start attending classes on campus, how do you know you are picking the right classes that will lead to a career in an in-demand field? Who is helping you find that path from college to career? Can you even find the career services office on your campus?

“We’ve had this very basic understanding that if we just put an office somewhere — shove it in the basement — and you stop off there on your way before graduating and (we) look at your resume that we’ve somehow done our job.”

Bridget Burns, Exec. Dir., University Innovation Alliance (Photo: UIA)

Bridget Burns, the executive director of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), is my guest on this episode of Work in Progress. She says that the old model of a career services office is not enough in this day and age of rapid technological change, that it’s time to reimagine how higher education approaches the college-to-career pathway.

“It has to be integrated into the classroom,” she says, and the UIA — a national consortium of eleven universities who work together to innovate and close their achievement gaps — is working to lead that change.

This the heart of the Alliance’s mission: redesign higher education around the current and future needs of students.

Burns and UIA have some very specific recommendations and you can hear all about them in this episode of Work in Progress, available wherever you get your podcasts.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Episode 117: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Engineer: Daniel Tureck
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

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.