‘Workforce development organizations are helping to bridge the gap by providing strong relationships with employers, skills training as needed, critical wraparound support’

Reflections on The Future of Work 2023 from WorkingNation Advisory Board member Gerald Chertavian

December 27, 2022

We asked our WorkingNation Advisory Board to share their thoughts on the most important issues and challenges facing the workforce and the labor market in the coming year.

Gerald Chertavian is the founder and CEO of Year Up, a national program that empowers underserved young adults to enter the economic mainstream.

Here are his thoughts on The Future of Work 2023.

“In 2022, we saw more and more companies shift towards skills-based hiring. By investing in real practice change through their recruitment strategies, leading companies are opening doors for diverse and underrepresented talent.

The challenge now is ensuring that individuals can gain the skills that employers need while creating a seamless journey from training to employment.

Community colleges serve the biggest population of people looking to upskill. However, in the past, these institutions were much more focused on keeping students enrolled or having them transfer to a four-year college than on connecting them to a career.

While they remain under-resourced when it comes to career services, an increasing number of forward-thinking community college leaders are now partnering with organizations to meet this need.

Workforce development organizations are helping to bridge the gap by providing strong relationships with employers, skills training as needed, critical wraparound support, and an understanding around which technical and professional skills are in-demand. These institutions are helping their students achieve superior outcomes while providing employers with new pipelines of skilled, motivated talent.

But they can’t do it alone. In cities where workforce investment boards, community organizations, and training providers are partnering with community colleges, we see the potential to maximize access to careers for young adults and dramatically change employment systems.

Looking forward, I am encouraged by these innovations in how we upskill and support underrepresented talent, and by employers’ increasing acknowledgement that skills matter more than degrees.”

You can read all The Future of Work 2023 articles from our WorkingNation Advisory Board here.

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‘We are overdue as a country to provide equitable, inclusive, and accessible employment opportunities for all.’

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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.