Steve Cole is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and Vice President of Advancement at Veterans Bridge Home. Here, Steve recounts his experience of being underemployed after serving and the effect it has on veterans’ employment and reputation.
Steve tells us, “In the military, you’re given a lot of experience and a lot of responsibility at a pretty young age. Yeah. The first job that you have, you’re leading soldiers and you’ve never even been a soldier and you’re responsible for them as a lieutenant, second lieutenant in the army. My last job in the army, I was one of three people deciding whether the army was going to be in a feature film in Hollywood or not.”
At his job now, Steve is responsible for community engagement, communications, and development. Steven served for more than 20 years in roles including the public affairs officer in Washington DC, Kabul, Afghanistan, and as the Army’s liaison to the film and TV industry in Los Angeles, CA.
Prior to these public relations assignments, Steven taught history at West Point and served in numerous management and staff assignments in armor and cavalry organizations. Prior to joining the VBH team, he was the Director of Communications at Charlotte Center City Partners.
Organized by America’s Warrior Partnership, the Warrior Community Integration Symposium is an opportunity to share best practices, find innovative solutions, and form new collaborative partnerships to better help the veterans in their communities address the work challenges they sometimes encounter when making the transition to civilian life.
WorkingNation set up its cameras at the Symposium and interviewed the speakers and attendees about the important issue of helping veterans deal with workforce challenges. You can follow the conversation on our social media under the hashtag #
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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.
