What Is the Future of Work in America? In a Word: Disruption.

From ever-changing technology to the disconnect between the skills workers have and what employers need… From the sidelining of a greying workforce to the lack of equal access to education and training…

In this WorkingNation special report, these are just some of the coming year’s workforce issues that have prompted our Advisory Board to issue calls for action. Comprised of business, education, and nonprofit leaders, the Board shares how stakeholders, society-wide, should navigate 2025.

At the heart of their thoughts: How can we ensure everyone can pursue the American Dream and thrive in today’s transitioning economy? Watch the interviews with WorkingNation editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim.

Paul Irving

Senior Advisor, Project on Future Workforce, Harvard University

Despite experience and deep knowledge, older workers are often overlooked in the workplace and this is a mistake for employers who say they can’t find enough workers, says Paul Irving, senior advisor at the Milken Institute.

“It’s a paradox that we understand that older workers bring not only knowledge and experience, but wisdom, judgment, understanding how to navigate environments, how to get things done to very much complement the skills of younger counterparts.

“And yet in HR offices around the country, in screening processes, older people are oftentimes left on the sidelines.”

He makes a compelling case as to how everyone – the worker, coworkers, and employers – are the winners when the team includes an older worker.

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Irving continues, “There’s lots of evidence to suggest that older people are not only able, but willing and interested in learning about new technologies. 

“And yet employers seem not to make the same investments in their older workers that they do in their younger ones. That’s a mistake.”

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.