This episode contains a recording from a panel for the Service Now Skills Intelligence accelerator. Host Kelly Ryan Bailey was joined by Dr. Yustina Saleh, Kristen Steuben, and Nancy Romanyshyn. With a special guest appearance by Kelley Steven-Waiss - Founder of Hitch.works and an audience of CHROs, the panel discussed the daily challenges of helping leaders grow and optimize their talent.  

This episode is sponsored by Visier, the market leader in workforce analytics with a purpose to reveal the human truth about your workforce to contribute to a better future. Learn more at visier.com.

Guest Social Handles and Websites:

Yustina Saleh LinkedIn / Visier

Krista Steuben LinkedIn / PayScale

Nancy Romanyshyn LinkedIn / Syndio

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This week’s episode features not one, but two guests! Kelly sits down with Phil Komarny, the Chief Innovation Officer at Maryville University, and Dr. Mark Lombardi, the President of Maryville University, and co-author of the book Pivot – A Vision for the new University.

They talk about the technological approach they are using to center students in their own educational journeys, so learners can discover the pedagogy that best works for them, and collectively we can create better access to higher education at an affordable price and in a flexible way.  

Takeaways: 

1. The reality is that everyone can be successful & achieve & learn. You just have to find the right key to unlock that lock.  

2. Empowering students means you're not the sage on the stage anymore--you're the guide on the side.  

3. Revolution in higher ed has to be based on the student, on student data, and on the democratization of knowledge. 

Follow Phil, Mark, and Maryville University on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Learn more at https://www.maryville.edu/ 

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Join Kelly as she sits down with Kelley Steven-Waiss to discuss what skills have fueled her career. Kelley is the Founder, Executive Chairman, and Chief Product Officer of Hitch Works, a skills intelligence and talent mobility platform. She talks about why she is so passionate about revolutionizing HR practices, what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, and why she wants to increase access to education and skill-building opportunities.  

Kelley believes in disrupting HR to allow for jungle gym careers.  

Takeaways: 

1. One of the most interesting things about humans is that we are amalgamations of our life experiences and our professional experiences.  
2. Leverage your network, do your homework, and then be fearless.    
3. I would argue that the more adversity you have, the better you can overcome objections or difficulties in the future.  

Follow Kelley on LinkedIn and Twitter and learn more at hitch.works 

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Kelly is joined by Fernando Rodriguez-Villa. Fernando is the co-founder and chief executive officer of AdeptID. They discuss their shared passion to make job mobility easier for everyone, regardless of their level of education, applying machine learning to transferrable skills, and why it can be so challenging to talk about skills. 

Learn how Fernando is using similar AI to Netflix to better match skills to jobs.  

Takeaways: 

1. “All the really exciting things I’ve learned, I learned after I graduated from school.” 
2. It’s impossible to disentangle technology from the people who make it, which is why it’s so important to have diverse, representative teams building our tech.  
3. Being able to align something you want to have happen in the world with your personality and your business model is the ultimate goal.  

Follow Fernando on LinkedIn and Twitter @frodriguezvilla 

Learn more at adept-id.com 

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This week, Kelly speaks with Bridgette Gray. Bridgette is the Chief Customer Officer at Opportunity At Work, a founding member of Chief DC, and Leap ambassador. They discuss why STARS (people who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes) are such a valuable untapped resource in today’s workforce, Bridgette’s ultimate career goal, and what it was like being on a Zoom call with Michelle Obama. 

Takeaways: 

1. Talent is always equal, opportunity is not. 
2. Diversifying talent at work will also help us work on some deep systemic issues in our country.  
3. Don’t ever think that there is a place where you can’t continue to grow, learn, and beef up your knowledge, because knowledge is not written in a textbook. It’s the things you have to watch, listen to, and learn about by asking questions. 

Follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter @BridgetteFGray 

Learn more at opportunityatwork.org

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Kelly is joined by Peter A. Cabral, a faculty member on Digital Mobility, the Future of Cities, and Disruption at Singularity University. He is also the Managing Partner at Mount Olive Partners, a serial entrepreneur, author, and startup business advisor in the areas of urban mobility, disruptive technologies, big data, and artificial intelligence. 

They discuss the benefits of being a T-shaped professional, how technology will make us even more human, and the significant effects of disruption and democratization. 

Big Takeaways: 

1. The ability to connect the dots in a multidisciplinary fashion is what makes a leader.  
2. “Our world is not local anymore, it is global. Our world is not linear, it is exponential. Abundance and prosperity create a life of opportunity.” 
3. “The future is bright for the ones that understand that technology's here as a great, phenomenal tool, that is targeting to seek solutions for our greatest problems.” 

Follow Peter on LinkedIn and IG @Peter_Cabral 

Learn more at Mountolivepartners.com and via Singularity

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With us today is Cleo Haynal. Cleo is the director of lifecycle marketing at Alation. She is also a military spouse who has been benefitting from remote work opportunities long before the pandemic normalized it, and has amazing advice for getting the most out of remote workspaces with her networking tricks and tips.  

Big Takeaways: 

1. Two major challenges to employees are that we put a premium on geography that isn't necessarily there, and we judge people's loyalty on external criteria that don’t necessarily correlate to being a high-performing employee.  
2. “Whenever I attend a company-wide meeting, I try to write down the name of a person I have not connected with before, and just reach out to them.” 
3. Consider negotiating your job description to focus on things that interest you.  

Can the Hybrid Workplace Help Military Spouses Careers? 

Follow Cleo on LinkedIn and learn more at alation.com 

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This week, we have a special bonus episode for you. Kelly recently had the honor of teaming up with Harvard university's career advisor and best-selling author of The Unspoken Rules; Secrets to Starting Your Career off Right Gorick Ng, Glassdoor’s Learning and Development Senior Manager, Karla Talley, and Coursera’s product designer, Kim Alban for a Fishbowl live event titled Do I Really Need Another Degree? 

During the live session, we discussed, whether it's worth the money to take advantage of upskilling opportunities and answered questions from an audience of over 1000 participants, so we are excited to share that recorded session with you here. 

Big Takeaways: 

1. We often have a lot of skills that we've learned through informal education and informal work experience. It doesn't matter if it comes from life experience, bring it into work, talk about it, and use that to your advantage at work as well. 
2. Find people who have pursued a certain career path that you'd like to pursue. Contact them and see if that graduate degree actually got them closer to where they are, or if they feel like they could have gotten there without that detour. 
3. You just need to be in different rooms to help you further. So, it really important to look at growth and development in all facets, to be able to get you where you want to be. 

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Kelly got to speak with the incredible Ramona Schindelheim about the importance of reskilling to job mobility. Ramona is the editor in chief at WorkingNation, the executive producer and host of the Work in Progress podcast, and an award-winning journalist. 

Ramona believes a majorly important component to upskilling is what you can learn on the job.  

Big Takeaways: 

1. You really need to invest in the people who work for you to help them find what they're capable of. Listen to them when they say that they can do it and give them the opportunity to do it. 
2. Training their workforce is a smart move on the part of the employer. It’s an education benefit to their existing employees so they are going to get really good workers out of it while also putting really skilled people back out into the workforce.  
3. Higher education needs to somewhat reinvent itself to put the focus more on the outcome over career.  

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Meet Chandra Sanders, the director of the RISE initiative by The Mom Project. Chandra is using her experience as a mom and a “non-traditional” job candidate to help other women pivot into prosperity the way that she did. Learn what skills helped her shift from one industry to the next throughout her career, and how she is paying it forward to help other women achieve the stability and success she has found.  

Learn more and support RISE and The Mom Project at momproject.org.

Big Takeaways: 

1. Moms are the C-suite of our entire lives. We know how to run things, we know how to budget, we know how to do conflict resolution. We know how to do everything. 
2. Talent, acquisition partners are really being creative in how they are sourcing, diverse candidates, especially if they want women and even more if they want moms. They have to now look at these candidates in a different way.  
3. The trending “hot skills” today are data analytics, project management, and UX design.  

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This is a Growth Network Podcasts Production