GirlsWhoCodeWCwoutwords-e1576119646560

Weekly Changemaker: Reshma Saujani

This week, WorkingNation's #WeeklyChangemaker is Reshma Saujani who is helping close the gender gap in technology with her nonprofit Girls Who Code.
-

Reshma Saujani headshotComputing is where the jobs are and where they will be in the future, but fewer than 1 in 5 computer science graduates are women, and women make up a smaller proportion of computer scientists today than they did 25 years ago.

Founded by Reshma Saujani, the international nonprofit Girls Who Code is changing that by encouraging girls to be brave and find futures in computer science. To date, Girls Who Code has directly worked with 185,000 girls and has indirectly helped 1 million young women. ⁠⠀
⁠⠀
Saujani is focused on closing the gender gap in technology and giving girls and women the opportunity to learn increasingly important digital skills and the chance to build a stable and successful future for themselves in the new world of work. In addition to her career as a lawyer and former Deputy Public Advocate at the Office of the New York City Public Advocate, Saujani is the author of Women Who Don’t Wait in Line: Break the Mold, Lead the Way; Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World; and Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder.
⁠⠀
The participation of female students in computer science is only 20-25 percent of high school courses, university courses, and the workforce. Girls Who Code’s college-aged alumni are majoring in computer science and related fields at a rate 15 times the national average.

The organization reaches historically underrepresented groups at a remarkable rate and their Black and Latinx alumni are majoring in computer science & related fields at a rate 16 times higher than the national average.⁠

Related: Girls Who Code: Nurturing the next generation of engineering leaders

WorkingNation’s Weekly Changemaker appears each Wednesday on our Instagram page. Consider WorkingNation your source on the future of work and join the conversation. Follow us on Instagram.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by WorkingNation (@workingnation) on

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.