WHYY public radio in Philadelphia previews our Town Hall at Rutgers University

The Heldrich Center's Carl Van Horn and Maria Heidkamp talk about narrowing the skills gap for mid-career workers with WHYY's Dave Eller.

By Matt Parke

August 4, 2017

To promote the August 8 Town Hall co-hosted by WorkingNation and the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, two of our scheduled panelists appeared on Philadelphia’s WHYY public radio.

Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center and Maria Heidkamp, director of the Heldrich Center’s New Start Career Network addressed the main topic which will be discussed at the Town Hall: re-skilling the mid-career workforce to prepare them for jobs in the new economy.

“Fasten your seatbelts, change is happening faster than ever before. That’s why we need to provide people a way to cope with that turbulence,” Van Horn tells WHYY’s Dave Eller, “This is the new normal: rapidly changing economies, jobs and whole occupations and skills becoming no longer relevant.”

The Heldrich Center’s New Start Career Network is helping these mid-career workers get back on their feet through career coaching and skills-training. As Heidkamp explains, an aging workforce needs specialized counseling to adapt to changes brought on by automation.

“We encourage them to look for ways to keep their skills up while they are looking [for work],” Heidkamp says, “Maybe that is taking advantage of free online training or doing skills-based volunteering with a non-profit to help with networking.”

The Town Hall will kick off at 4 p.m. at the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Theater at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. PBS NewsHour anchor Hari Sreenivasan will moderate our panel.

There is still time for you to register for this free event. Click here to sign up.

You can listen to the entire interview below.

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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.