See You in Austin

We have a lot to talk about at SXSW EDU

WorkingNation hosts our Overheard interview series and sessions beginning March 6
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We’re just 10 days away from the big education conference SXSW EDU 2023 in Austin, Texas.

WorkingNation will be among the thousands taking part in the four-day annual gathering of thought leaders discussing the critical role education plays in our lives and livelihoods. We are once again proud to be a media partner with SXSW EDU and have a lot of stories to tell around the topic.

We’re Talking About Education and Career Pathways

This year the conference is focusing on multiple issues including the reworking of the education system to better prepare learners for the workforce, accessibility and inclusion, public policy and civic engagement, and the role tech in the way we learn.

We’re be talking about all these with many leaders from academia, nonprofits, government an,d business for our signature digital interview series WorkingNation Overheard.

If you are in Austin, we’ll be set up in the SXSW EDU Expo Hall on Tuesday, March 7 and Wednesday, March 8. Stop by and say hello!

And if you can’t make the conference, you can follow the conversations on all our WorkingNation social media. We’ll be sharing parts of the interviews all week.

Look for us at @WorkingNation #WorkingNationOverheard #SXSWEDU23.

By the way, last year, we spoke with more than two dozen people for Overheard. You can catch up on those conversations here.

We’re Talking About Skills-Based Hiring

Do you really need a bachelors degree to succeed in a career, or even get hired in a good-paying job for that matter?

I’ll be moderating a panel on Monday on how we can break down the invisible barrier to economic mobility – the lack of a four-year degree. The conversation comes out of the work our friends and partners at Opportunity@Work started with the HireSTARs and Tear Down the Paper Ceiling campaigns.

Joining me in the discussion are Bridgette Gray of Opportunity@Work, Patti Constantakis of Walmart.org, and Kenny Nguyen of ThreeSixtyEight.

We’re Talking About DEIA

For the past three years, WorkingNation has spent a lot of time discussing expanding access to education and careers for people with disabilities.

That’s the subject of our Thursday panel lead by our president Jane Oates.

Jane has an amazing group of panelists joining that discussion – Kathy Martinez of Expedia Group, Claudia Gordon of T-Mobile, and Hiren Shukla of EY.

Martinez is partially-sighted and Gordon is deaf, both since a young age. They share their personal insight into what it means to be a person with a disability in the workforce and how they are working to empower people with disabilities. Shukla founded and leads the EY Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence which focuses on expanding access for the neurodivergent.

It should be an amazing conversation.

Jane will be having a very busy week!

She’ll also be joining Scott Pulsipher of Western Governors University, Michael Hansen of Cengage Group, and David Barnes of IBM in a discussion of how changes in some current education policies could help quickly expand education access to millions of learners.

It’s an important topic considering how expanded access could help us further close the skills gap in today’s workforce and prepare American workers for sustainable employment in good jobs.

We hope to see you in Austin – or at least on social media!

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.