Vanessa Phipps, a Senior Consultant with Leading NOW, has over twenty years of successful executive and management development learning facilitation, combined with a strong background in compliance and global diversity and inclusion consulting.
Prior to joining Leading Women, Vanessa served as the Interim Chief Diversity Officer at the ACLU in New York City. She has continued to serve as a partner to organizations whose mission aligns with her unwavering commitment to racial, gender, and economic equity, including the ACLU’s affiliate offices in Kansas, Montana and Louisiana. She also supports the mission and vision of the Colorado People’s Alliance (COPA) through her efforts to recruit and develop talent that will sustain a strong organizational and ”human relations” infrastructure.
Her corporate experience in the compliance and ED&I space began at Aventis Pharmaceuticals (now Sanofi, U.S.) where she honed her skills by building a talent planning process in partnership with Executive Leadership - resulting in a measurable commitment by C-Suite leaders to identify and promote diverse talent in their respective division’s talent and succession planning goals.
She also managed the launch of the first Women’s and the first African American Employee/Business Resource Groups at the organizations and directed the submission process for the Working Mother Top 100 award, leading to the companies garnering the honors for the first time.
Earlier in her career, Vanessa designed a development process for an employer that supported high performing individual contributors, many of whose approach to work and definitions of success were not always in concert with those of their respective leaders.
Before relocating to New Orleans, Louisiana, Vanessa served as the Board President of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources (NAAAHR New Jersey), an organization that provides ongoing professional development for the Association’s HR and business members, university students and Women and Minority-owned Businesses.
She holds a B.S. in Human Services and Sociology from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania.
