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Getting mid-career workers back into the workforce is the topic of tomorrow’s WorkingNation and Heldrich Center for the Workforce at Rutgers University Town Hall event at the Mastrobuono Theater in New Brunswick.

Maria Heidkamp

To get the word out to New Jersey residents, Heldrich Center senior researcher and director of the New Start Career Network Maria Heidkamp was interviewed by New Jersey 101.5 FM WXKW on Sunday.

Long-term unemployment has taken hold in the Garden State and 32 percent of its unemployed have been out of work for longer than six months, WXKW reports.

Heidkamp told WXKW that the half of New Jersey’s unemployed are over the age of 45. Connecting these workers with training programs and career coaching is part of the mission of Heidkamp’s New Start Career Network. The success of this program is one of the many solutions which will be talked during our 4 p.m. panel, moderated by PBS NewsHour anchor Hari Sreenivasan.

“We just know there are a lot of people who are either working or looking for work right now, who are just going to have to acquire some new skills and adapt to changes,” Heidkamp said.

Heidkamp will speak as part of tomorrow’s panel. She will be joined by the following panelists who also are scheduled to appear:

There is still time for you to join tomorrow’s audience. To register for this free event: click here.

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.