Tim-Ryan

Following his announcement Thursday that he will challenge Nancy Pelosi and run for House Minority Leader, Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday morning to talk about American manufacturing jobs and the Democratic Party’s role moving forward to address the needs of the working class.

Watch what he had to say:

Ryan’s view that there needs to be a charge towards fostering advancements in manufacturing and new areas of manufacturing as a resource for new jobs is on point, however, his skeptical view that workers “don’t want to run a computer, they want to run a backhoe” is what got us here in the first place. There are some areas of working class jobs that will go away and won’t come back, and giving people the opportunities to get the training or the skills they will need to be successful in the new workforce is the direction we need to be focused on. AmeriCorps has demonstrated success in this area with its VISTA members in Eastern Kentucky teaching out-of-work coal miners the workplace skills needed for the jobs of the future.

An issue that Ryan neglected to mention, where there also needs to be a charge, is the skills gap problem. There are plenty of skilled jobs that are available, but no one qualified to fill them. There needs to be a focus on companies like Toyota and organizations like Year Up that are figuring out ways to address this problem and use those as a blueprint for solutions.

For more on this subject, see our engaging discussion, The Table.

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.