Play Video

Reskilling the Mid-Career Workforce

Connecting people, their skills, and the jobs that are out there

The first WorkingNation Town Hall focused on problems stemming from long-term unemployment of middle-aged workers and solutions on getting them back to work.
WorkingNation’s first town hall focuses on the widening skills gap that middle-aged workers are up against, and how it impacts their ability to return to work. Esteemed experts gather to discuss the unique challenges that individuals 45 and older face when re-entering the workforce, as well as solutions that could help end long-term unemployment.

It began with WorkingNation’s stark warning about an impending employment crisis.

But the mood at our first town hall on Reskilling the Mid-Career Workforce shifted from concern to understanding to laughter as our panel of business leaders and academic experts discussed solutions to a crowd of more than 200 at the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Tuesday’s event, which began with WorkingNation’s animated short The Slope of the Curve and featured the debut of a WorkingNation mini-documentary about the New Start Career Network, was filmed for New Jersey Public Television to be aired this month.

Presented in conjunction with the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University and moderated by PBS NewsHour anchor Hari Sreenivasan, the town hall focused on the challenges of long-term unemployment due to automation or offshoring of jobs, especially for workers over the age of 45.

“Other than the death of a family member or close friend, losing a job is the worst thing that can happen to someone,” Heldrich Center Director Carl Van Horn said.

The trauma of losing a job and the added embarrassment of a long job search – fraught with tricky application processes – can have a cumulative effect on older workers, leading them to drop out of the job hunt feeling worthless and uncompetitive. This causes mental health problems, disrupt families and increases the social burden to communities who have to deal with the compounded ills.

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.

Town Halls

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.