If you want to see a successful program of skills-based analysis connecting workers without college degrees to middle-skill careers, check out Skillful, a career guidance program currently underway in Colorado. This public-private venture from The Markle Foundation, LinkedIn, Microsoft and the state of Colorado takes mid-career workers without college degrees and puts them on the path to in-demand jobs in growth industries like advanced manufacturing, information technology and health care. Many jobs in these sectors are going unfilled and most of them do not require a college degree, just a well-written résumé highlighting training certificates and skills.
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Skillful uses the mid-career worker’s experience and puts it to work for them. A person’s education matters, but their work background and on-the-job training is what counts. The program’s career coaches use this information to identify areas where the worker can build their skills through training programs available to them in their state. More help is available from Skillful through résumé writing workshops and job interview counseling, which build the soft skills necessary for workers to place themselves back into the workforce. Skillful is also working with employers and offering a toolkit to enable them to perform more skills-based hiring. We at WorkingNation love this video from The Markle Foundation which explains Skillful’s mission in greater detail. The program’s success in Colorado is just the beginning and thanks to a large grant from Microsoft, the investment will enable Skillful to be scaled to more states. To find out more about Skillful, click here. For more on The Markle Foundation, click here. Join the Conversation: Take a look at the Skillful website and tell us what you think on our Facebook page.

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.