Scott Budnick, founder of One Community and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, is a veteran film producer (The Hangover films, War Dogs) and criminal justice reform activist. He spoke with us about the effect exposing people to former prisoners who have paid their debt to society can have in opening up doors for professional opportunities at the Milken Global Conference 2019.
It’s something Scott knows from experience. After being invited to Sylmar Juvenile Hall to teach a class, he met someone who changed his life. He subsequently quit the film industry and started the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), where for the next five years he lobbied lawmakers for legislation that would help the incarcerated and support them with jobs and opportunity when they got out.
He later realized that his talents and passion could be put to better use for his cause, so he returned to Hollywood and raised $50 million to establish One Community, a film, TV, and new media company that focuses on creating content that effects positive social change.
In this clip below, Scott tells us about a kid he hired as a prop intern on The Hangover who was formerly incarcerated. He worked so hard every day that the prop master brought him onto his team, he joined the union, worked on Iron Man, and now makes $200,000 a year.
Watch more of what Scott had to say here.
WorkingNation was on the ground at Milken Global Conference 2019 where some of the most powerful people in business, government, healthcare, and entertainment have gathered to discuss and debate how the world is being disrupted by economic and social change and what to do about it. The goal of the talk at the conference is how to drive shared prosperity.
While there, we documented all things future of work on Twitter at #WorkingNationOverheard and in interviews at our pop-up studio (watch our playlist below).
© Copyright 2024 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation
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.
