Angela-Jackson-WIP-2

New Profit is looking for, and funding, reskilling innovators

A conversation with Angela Jackson, partner, Learn to Earn, New Profit
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Angela Jackson is the future of work lead at New Profit, a venture philanthropy firm which invests in social entrepreneurs who are thinking about how to break down barriers between people and opportunities in the United States. Jackson leads the $15 million future of work global fund.

“The spirit behind it (the fund) is to invest in entrepreneurs and companies developing innovative technologies and solutions to reskilling and upskilling low-wage workers and workers who are at the entry level,” she tells me in this episode of the Work in Progress podcast.

To that end, New Profit has launched a $6 million Future of Work Challenge aimed at identifying and funding promising solutions serving displaced and underinvested workers. The challenge has two parts—the Rapid Reskilling XPRIZE, with a goal of upskilling 25,000 workers displaced by COVID-19 and the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the U.S. initiative of MIT Solve aimed at sourcing online solutions that help workers assess their skills, find jobs in high-growth industries, and get placement support.

“With the Rapid Reskilling XPRIZE, we’re trying to surface innovations and innovators who are thinking about how do we exponentially decrease the time to train people for jobs of the future.” she explains.

Jackson says the second piece with MIT SOLVE is about re-imagining pathways to employment. “You hear a lot about people who will go to boot camps, or they’ll do a coding training. Once they have the skills, we’re looking for entrepreneurs and organizations out there who are thinking about how do we help workers assess their skills, find high growth jobs, get matched, and get placement support.”

New Profit says that, as a partner in the challenge, Jobs For The Future will equip five innovation-oriented workforce boards to deploy the winning solutions and technologies to one million displaced workers. Partners in the challenge include the Walmart FoundationStrada Education Network, the Annie E. Casey and Joyce foundations, Lumina Ventures, the Siegel Family EndowmentAccenture, IBM, CSU Global, and Gary Community Investments.

Hear more about the Future of Work Challenge, and how the winners will be chosen, in the Work in Progress podcast. You can listen here, or download the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And please subscribe!

Episode 149: Angela Jackson, Future of Work Lead, New Profit
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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.