Author / Executive Coach
Founder & CEO, Gigi Gilliard Development
Author of The Loud Brown Round Girl, The Inclusion C.O.D.E. (2020) and Hello Beautiful, Get Well Soon (2021), Gigi Gilliard owns and operates her learning and organizational development consultancy – Gigi Gilliard Development (affectionately referred to as GGD). Pursuing an Executive Masters from Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations, Gigi is a graduate of Rutgers University, (New Brunswick, New Jersey), with a Bachelors in Sociology and Communications.
She is a triple-certified Master Coach in the disciplines of leadership development, executive coaching and coaching for presentation/speech delivery for C-suite executives. Renowned for her work in the DEI space Gigi masterfully leads professionals of all levels in conversations and skill-building that help elevate inclusion.
Under her brand Gigi Gilliard: Author| Speaker | Executive Coach, Gigi utilizes dynamic content and facilitation as she provides remedies designed to help organizations in the areas of leadership development, inclusive leadership, and inclusion strategy. In client engagements focused on diversity growth, Gigi helps to build solutions that encourage and embed inclusion, while elevating and promoting the attitude of belonging. A stalwart enemy of exclusion and inequality for any group anywhere, DEI&B, (diversity, equity, inclusion, AND belonging) is her specialty. She has coined the moniker DEI&B and believes that creating the sentiment of belonging is a crucial, and often missed, part of the inclusion conversation.
Recognized as “a conversation architect,” Gigi is a prolific orator and deeply skilled facilitator. An intuitive empath, she is regularly sought-out to lead the most difficult, painful, and challenging conversations about “otherness “and race. Here in the United States, she is excitedly partnered with several East Coast based C-suite executives and their teams like, Ryan Health, Hachette Book Group, Hudson River Museum, Young Audiences New York, Penguin Random House, and globally across the pond with Tempo Recruiting.
Recently, clients have said this of Gigi:
“We couldn’t have gotten through this without you. You made us feel safe, seen and challenged.
Thank you, Gigi…thank you so much.” – Young Audiences New York
“When Gigi came on to help engage DEIB for my non-profit in the spring of 2020, we had no idea of the powder keg that would be erupting around the USA, and what an impact it, and her sessions, would have on us. I can honestly say Gigi helped my team and I through one of the hardest points of our personal and professional lives (the confluence of social injustice/unrest, COVID, and lockdowns in NYC), and without her I don’t know where we would be as an organization today. Formal training notwithstanding, Gigi is one of the most real, caring, loving, funny souls I know, and it makes me so proud to not only call her a partner/colleague, but a friend and mentor.” – Bobby Irven, BRAC USA
A native and resident New Yorker, Gigi is devoted to her faith, family, and equality; and is focused on sharing principles of belongingness and inclusion to those interested in championing these crucial behavioral changes in their workspaces… and in their lives.