Meet the COO

Meet the COO: Lori G. Walker

Entering The ELC

Q:Lori, what attracted you to The ELC? A: I was enamored with The ELC and its mission. However, I underestimated the true, resounding passion from the members, as well as past board members, who felt that there were organizational opportunities needed to help put The ELC in position to be sustainable for the future. My experiences in corporate, coupled with their passion, made me hopeful and excited. I felt the possibilities were limitless for what we could accomplish at The ELC.

Q:After your first 90 days, what were some of

your strategic business priorities? Have they changed?

A:When I assume responsibility in a role, I conduct research to understand our strategic imperatives — what are we seeking to accomplish? From my corporate experience, my anchor tenets are people, process and technology.

Looking at our personnel, I saw we needed more clearly defined roles that leveraged their best acumen for the business. From a tech standpoint, it was clear that our infrastructure needed work — there was an opportunity to refine how we connected with our members and their companies. So I quickly pivoted from working on our business strategy to surveying and managing our gaps instead. Q:How did the culture or mission of

The ELC influence those priorities? How did our members inform them?

A: I remember the listening tours with members. There were two pages of notes for almost every person we interviewed. Some had pain points about one thing or another, but there were also expectations from our other stakeholders. The deeper I went, the more challenging it became to focus on one thing. A healthy tension forced me to do some analysis to get to the right answer, rather than AN answer, and it definitely helped having the support of The ELC Board of Directors, Mike Hyter, and member influencers to get to those priorities.

Meet the COO: Lori G. Walker

Continued

Addressing Opportunities

Q:Since you started at The ELC, the corporate

landscape has changed – rising inflation, a softening of a once laser-sharp focus on DEI, and massive corporate layoffs have occurred. How do you view the shifting state of the nation, and what gives you hope about the future of our Black corporate leaders?

A:I believe we have an opportunity to be a more integrated partner to corporate America given the strength of our brand and the participation of our member-affiliated companies.

Corporations are seeking vendors who know how to consolidate their spend, and because there’s no single authority to move the needle for Black executives in their ranks, we can position ourselves to be their trusted advisors. We can harness the talent of our membership as an offering to corporate America and help inform how they move forward in DEI.

Q:What challenges have you overcome this year,

and what opportunities excite you in 2023?

A:There have been more opportunities than challenges this year. Chief among them is the critical need to shift away from transactional relationships towards strategic partnerships with our member-affiliated companies. We also have an incredible opportunity to reinvigorate the execution of our philanthropic strategy.

Each year our member-affiliated companies send their high-performing talent to our seminars, but we don’t yet carry those professionals through our Institute’s continuum of career programming. Also, our philanthropy team has the opportunity to operationalize tens of millions of dollars in scholarships for ELC scholars, but needs more infrastructure to build that runway.

We now have the right collection of staff and stronger systems to turbo-charge this work, so those are two missed opportunities this year that we’re tackling in 2023, and I couldn’t be more excited.

A Year in Review

Q:When you think of the more strategic business

imperatives you knew The ELC could benefit from, what is one thing you are most proud of implementing?

A:Proud is a strong word for me because I think there’s always more work to do. However, restructuring our member classifications is what I’m most proud of to date.

Returning to in-person events and being able to celebrate Black excellence at The ELC Recognition Gala were major strides too. Despite the challenges of COVID, we were able to implement policies and protocols that kept our community safe, and still managed to have fun at the Gala with no instances of an outbreak.

The capstone was the launch of My ELC — our new web-based app that allows members to network and share ideas and information in real time. These are important milestones for The ELC this year.