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Keeping America's Promise

Bridging the gap between military service and the civilian sector

What are the solutions to increasing veteran employment? Watch the entire Town Hall held at the George W. Bush Presidential Library for key insights and solutions from our expert panelists.
Each year, 200,000 men and women transition out of service and return to civilian life. Despite labor shortages across numerous industries, veterans face unique challenges that hinder them from filling these in-demand jobs. In this town hall, veterans and business leaders discuss key insights into, and solutions regarding, increasing veteran employment.

The value of the American veteran in the civilian working world is often overlooked. Raising awareness of this problem was the goal of our Dallas town hall meeting, Keeping America’s Promise.

A quarter of a million men and women serving in the U.S. Armed Forces make the transition into the civilian sector each year. Our panel of experts – representing top companies and outreach programs committed to hiring and assisting veterans – discussed solutions which connect them to jobs and help close the skills gap.

WorkingNation and Hiring America co-produced the Town Hall, Keeping America’s Promise, at the George W. Bush Presidential Library in October 2017. The event was broadcast on Hiring America’s syndicated TV show nationwide and the American Forces Network. The town hall meeting was supported with funding from the Eastwood Charitable Fund.

Keeping America’s Promise was moderated by journalist Stephanie Sy and divided into three panels. In the first segment, Sy went one-on-one with General George Casey Jr. (Ret.) and the former Army Chief of Staff gave his insight on how veterans fit into the modern workforce as leaders.

This was followed by a panel discussion featuring Nicole Gardner, VP of Global Business for IBM; Jeff Hall of Disabled American Veterans; CEO John Courson of Home Builders Institute and Jeff Cleland of the Bush Presidential Center Military Service Institute.

The final segment featured Larry Hughes, VP of Franchising Systems for 7-Eleven; Maria Terry, spokesperson for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America; Jason Oliver, VP of Talent Acquisition for AT&T; Andrew Morton of the Society for Human Resource Management and Commissioner Ruth Hughs of the Texas Workforce Commission.

Both panel discussions centered on the challenges that veterans face when entering civilian life. Veterans can have difficulty translating the skills they developed during their service into a language employers can understand. They also have to consider how their spouses and families will adjust to post-military life. Fortunately, new programs and technologies are being developed specifically for veterans to help them overcome these roadblocks.

Town Halls is our signature digital series that shines the spotlight on the most innovative initiatives helping to train and re-skill Americans for the most in-demand jobs now and in the future.

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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.