Gigi Gilliard

Biography

Author of The Loud Brown Round Girl (2020), The Inclusion C.O.D.E. (2020) and Hello Beautiful, Get Well Soon (2021), Gigi Gilliard brings over 20 years of experience as a Learning and Development practitioner, with over 10 of those years as a group coach facilitator and a subject matter expert in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. 

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“, building inclusion and dealing with race relations in the workplace. A stalwart enemy of exclusion and inequality for any group anywhere, DEI&B, (diversity, equity, inclusion, AND belonging) is her specialty. She has helped to popularize the moniker of DEI&B and believes that creating the sentiment of belonging is a crucial, and often missed, part of the inclusion conversation. 

Gigi is excitedly partnered with senior leadership teams at Ryan Health, Rhino, LLC, Hudson River Museum, Young Audiences New York, The Association of Art Museum Curators, Fordham University’s WFUV, Penguin Random House and globally across the pond with Tempo Recruiting. Gigi is focused on diversity growth; she helps to build solutions that encourage and embed inclusion, while elevating and promoting the attitude of belonging.

Gigi is a graduate of Rutgers University, with a Bachelors in Sociology and Communications. In the Fall of 2022 she was competitively selected to participate in a new Diversity Certificate program created by the Society of Diversity and is pursuing an Executive Masters degree from Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations.

Niche Areas of Expertise

• Diversity & Inclusion
• Emotional Intelligence
• Executive Presence
• Organizational Development
• Women & Leadership

Languages

• English
• Spanish