SXSW EDU 2024: Usher and IBM SkillsBuild team up to provide tech training

Lydia Logan, vice president of global education and workforce development for IBM, joined WorkingNation to share her thoughts on a just-announced collab with Usher
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A collaboration between IBM SkillsBuild and Usher’s New Look is providing free tech training to young people from historically underrepresented communities, says Lydia Logan, vice president of global education and workforce development for IBM.

Logan joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at SXSW EDU 2024 in Austin.

With a focus on AI, Logan says, “They need to learn everything from – what is it, how it intersects with cybersecurity? They need to understand what large language models are, what generative AI is, and all of the things that help them apply that technology to what they’re doing.”

She adds, “What does it mean to them both on their academic and professional journey, but also in their personal lives?”

IBM will be working with students – current and alumni – who participate or have participated in Usher’s New Look programming. Logan says, “We’re looking forward to a really robust and long-term relationship with them.”

She notes, “This is how people will start working and becoming more efficient. So rather than shying away from it, let’s lean in. Let’s teach students how to use those skills. Let’s make sure that they’ve got what they need in order to be really productive.”

Learn more about IBM SkillsBuild.
Learn more about Usher’s New Look.

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.