Shirley Engelmeier
CEO & Founder
Shirley Engelmeier, author of Becoming an Inclusive Leader: How to Navigate the 21st Century Global Workforce and Inclusion the New Competitive Business Advantage has been working as an Inclusion and Diversity Strategist and Consultant for more than 18 years. For the 15 years prior to that, Shirley spent her time in both field and senior level corporate consumer product organizations - Brown & Williamson and Frito-Lay. Shirley brings an operations and business perspective as she works in partnership with corporations and emerging organizations to support their Inclusion and Diversity Initiatives. Shirley is clear that inclusion is a strategy for engagement, innovation, productivity, and retention. Her innovation has resulted in a business approach to inclusion and diversity including customized web-based assessment, creating strategic and customized metrics beyond representation and designing solutions for Learning Over Time®.
In her previous roles, Shirley focused on senior management, corporate programs, and work force improvement. She listens to clients to ensure the necessary outcomes and client requirements are met. She is as skilled working with the CEO or COO as she is the entry-level person. When in the field, she was responsible for implementing corporate programs to all levels of the field. She used her vast field experience during her corporate assignments at Brown and Williamson and Frito-Lay to develop programs for national roll-out, which impacted all levels of field activities.
Over the years, Shirley has consulted with largely Fortune 500 companies on Inclusion and Diversity Initiatives within a broad range of industries, including SUPERVALU, ESPN, Denny's/Advantica, 3M, R.R. Donnelley, TRW, Prudential, U.S. Bank, COX Communication, BP Pipelines, and others. Originally trained as an educator, Shirley earned her B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota.