Laura Clydesdale
Laura Clydesdale
Biography
Laura is a coach, consultant, and speaker on the unique opportunities and stumbling blocks for women leaders. She has appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Sun Tribune, and Toronto Star. She is a sought-after keynote speaker and is a featured guest on many podcasts and radio programs. Laura helps organizations redesign processes that minimize unconscious bias and improve diverse representation at all levels of the corporate pipeline. Laura’s goal is to improve opportunity and fairness in the workforce to increase employee satisfaction and belonging across all demographic groups. Throughout her career, she has led many high-impact, process improvement teams including a cross-cultural, region-wide team in the Asia-Pacific region. She is a graduate with honors from GE’s competitive Financial Management Program and holds a BE from the University of Wisconsin Madison in Business Marketing. She lives in Berkeley, California, and is Co-Chair of Notes & Words, a benefit concert for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.
Background
- National speaker, most recently as keynote for 3,000 educators at the National ESEA Conference in Atlanta, GA.
- Redesigned succession planning processes to improve fairness, transparency, and bench strength in strategic roles for both a global medical supply company, and a global engineering and construction firm.
- Redesigned the performance management process for an internationally recognized food and beverage brand to optimize efficiency, people metrics, transparency, and fairness.
- Developed and customized assessment for the executive leadership team of a professional American football team in the NFC division of the NFL. Facilitated team workshop to understand their data, the implications for the organization, and overall succession planning needs. Coached individual leaders on their personal development.
- Founder and writer of the popular girls’ leadership blog, LEADUp at www.lauraclydesdale.com
- Human Resource Manager and Senior Consultant for Gap Inc., responsible for the design, implementation, and management of the Accelerated Development Leadership Program. Led integration team to successfully launch Gap, Inc’s inaugural on-line ‘catalog’ for Banana Republic.
- Senior Auditor, Corporate Audit Staff for General Electric Company, responsible for financial modeling and process improvement projects throughout the United States.
- Asia Quality Finance Leader for General Electric Plastics, responsible for the implementation of Six Sigma and executive leadership training across the Asia-Pacific Region.
