VEX 2024 (Photo: VEX Robotics World Championship)

VEX Robotics World Championship competitors gather with dreams of victory, STEM careers

Past competitors have gone on to careers in tech, CEO says, including with many of the event’s sponsors
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When competitors gather in Dallas next week (May 6-14) for the VEX Robotics World Championship, organizers expect 2,400 teams from 60 countries. The student competitors will range from elementary school all the way to college.

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On the ground at VEX World Robotics Championship 2016

About 1,000 teams of middle- and high-schoolers from more than 30 countries competed at the 2016 VEX Robotics World Championship in Nashville – shown in a WorkingNation video being re-released today – with some elementary-level competitions just added a year or two before.

But even though it’s grown, the basics of the competition haven’t changed much, says Dan Mantz, CEO of the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation, the nonprofit that has managed the event for the past 15 years (it started under different management in 2008).

‘A Little More Pizazz’

“VEX Worlds looks very similar,” he says. “There’s probably a little more pizazz right now. I think the pits are decorated a little bit more. We definitely have a lot more teams, so there’s a lot more people. But overall, the thing is the same.

Dan Mantz, CEO, REC Foundation
Dan Mantz, CEO, REC Foundation

“What the students said in that video, I think you would get similar responses from students today,” he adds. “I think students would talk about the iterative design process, that they had to build a lot of different versions of their robot to qualify. … And I think they would talk about their career aspirations. It was almost like a time capsule that if I showed students today, you could see them nodding their head.”

As in 2016, all the students gathered at VEX Worlds this year will be competing according to a robotics challenge theme. For high schoolers in 2016, it was “Nothing but Net,” and competitors had to design robots to gather projectiles and hit targets to score. This year’s theme will be “High Stakes,” which involves designing and deploying robots to pick up rings and put them on stakes.

Competitors Gain STEM Insights, Sponsors Court Next Generation

In both cases, Mantz says, the Northrop Grumman Foundation was the VEX Robotics competition presenting sponsor. However, he adds, in the interval since 2016, the number of VEX sponsors has increased threefold, and some may be courting the student competitors as their future STEM workforce.

“Many, many other Fortune 500 corporations have started embracing what we’re trying to do,” Mantz says.  So Google, Tesla, Texas Instruments, Eaton, all those companies are now large sponsors of our programs. And the reason they’re sponsors of our programs is they want these students.

“I think in 2016 we talked about the needs for tomorrow’s workforce,” he adds. “Well, that workforce is today, and these companies want to hire our students now. They don’t even wait for them to graduate from college. They hire them as high school interns, definitely as co-ops and internships in university, and then they’re making generous job offers to these students when they graduate.”

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.