ANCELLA LIVERS
Chief Innovation Officer
Prism President Ancella Livers is a skilled diversity and leadership development professional. She is the co-author of the book, Leading in Black and White and the HBR classic “Dear White Boss.” She has also written numerous articles, chapters, and reports on equity, diversity, and inclusion. In addition, for several years, she has written a blog focused on women of color in corporate America. In her TEDx talk, she discussed mutuality, which offered a new view of diversity and begins to chart an original way forward.
In 1995, Ancella moved to the Center for Creative Leadership®to build and manage their African-American Leadership program. She later also managed the Center’s Women’s Leadership program. In her first 12 years at the Center, Ancella managed numerous leadership programs and left the organization as the Director of Global Open Enrollment programs.
In 2007, Ancella became the Executive Director of the Institute for Leadership Development and Research for the Executive Leadership Council (ELC). The ELC is a membership organization for many of corporate America’s highest ranking African American executives. While there, she not only helped to rebuild the Institute’s infrastructure, but she also oversaw and expanded organization’s the research agenda. In particular, she helped craft a report that detailed the difficulties African-American women executives faced in reaching the C-Suite. During this period, she also worked on several reports that shed light on the issues facing white women and men and women of color as they worked to achieve corporate board positions.
In 2011, Ancella returned to the Center for Creative Leadership where she designed and facilitated leadership development initiatives for national and global organizations. She also continued her passion around equity, diversity, and inclusion through continued writing on the topic and designing and facilitating programs for the deaf and hard of hearing, and well as for leaders of color. Further, also helped develop the content for elf-paced e-learning course “Inclusive Leadership.”
Prior to her work in the diversity and leadership development field, Ancella was an assistant professor at the West Virginia University School of Journalism. She also spent a decade as a newspaper journalist and held roles as acting business editor and Capitol Hill reporter for Gannett News Service.
Ancella holds a B.S. in Mass Communications from Hampton University, a M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, and a M.A. and PH.D. in History from Carnegie Mellon University. She is also an executive coach and has served on several boards.
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