Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Practice Leader & Senior Consultant
Marley Bollinger, who’s been the subject of a Harvard Business School Case Study, has a passion for partnering with leaders and teams to discover the “more” of who they can be when they build cultures of inclusion, equity, and belonging. Her special interest is working with leaders to take the transformative journey to achieve higher levels of performance and employee engagement. Marley supports organizations in expanding their leader and team capacities to navigate complex change, embrace diversity, engage in deep listening, resolve conflicts, analyze and change system-wide policies of inequality, and then to sustain the positive outcomes and learning the organization has achieved through their collective strategic efforts.
Applying the Full Circle DEI framework, she offers industry best practices that focus on building an inclusive belonging culture and just as importantly, assessing and addressing systemic disparities in the organization’s policies and practices. She has collaborated with leadership across corporate, government and non-profit organizations from Apple and Disney to the Public Defender Service for Washington DC to Habitat for Humanity. She designs custom solutions to achieve the outcomes that matter most and leads engagements in strategic planning, in-depth leadership development, group and focus group assessment, stakeholder surveys, and facilitating teams in appreciating differences, deep listening, effective communication, empathy, and conflict resolution. In training, Marley creates a space of authentic respect, trust and safety while building on individual strengths. Known for in-the-moment creativity, she establishes a climate for innovative solution-architecting that achieves rewarding outcomes. She integrates impactful experiential activities in training and workshops to ensure that the insights and tools gained are relevant to each organization’s challenges and desired outcomes.
Experiences in higher education include Marley’s appointment to boards in the University of North Carolina system and current service on the Board of Trustees at St. Augustine's University (SAU), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) founded in 1867 in Raleigh, NC. As Chair of the SAU Board’s Committee for Strategic Planning, she also serves on the Personnel and Advancement Board Committees and Co-Chaired the Presidential Search Committee. As a member of the Re-imagining Committee with community stakeholders, she is collaborating to design a new model for a 21st century HBCU with Centers of Innovation in Social Justice, Entrepreneurship and STEM. She’s been a trainer at the University of Louisville Graduate School of Social Work and as adjunct faculty member at Spalding College.
As an Executive Coach, Marley is a Certified Leadership Maturity Coach (LMC) for the Harvard-tested Maturity Assessment Profile (MAP) and is certified in the MBTI assessment tools. Having completed the Post Graduate Practicum at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, she has a special interest in Polarity Work and each leader’s integrative journey toward wholeness.
