James O. Rodgers Ph.D.,FIMC has been called a "keen observer of business from many perspectives" and is acknowledged by his colleagues as the leading strategist in the field of diversity and inclusion.
As an executive coach, Dr. Rodgers has provided advice and counsel to executives in over 200 companies ranging from frontline Team managers to C-Suite leaders. He is the thought leader for the concept of diversity management as a key business strategy, which he calls Deliberate Diversity™. James has become the leading resource for leaders who want to use diversity to achieve better business results.
His corporate experience prior to becoming an executive coach was as a top manager at BellSouth, AT&T, and Bell Communications Research where he pioneered the business model to establish Bellcore as a technology-consulting firm. James was a fast-track executive hire and achieved top management status in record time. He also served as co-founder of BellSouth's corporate university, which taught leadership skills to all the senior executives.
Dr. Rodgers teaches business owners and executive teams how to create tangible results by effectively managing people and valuing differences. His core strength is helping successful executives identify blind spots and tackle tough topics that could affect their effectiveness as leaders.
He was recently elected to be a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC-USA). The Fellow of the Institute is the highest honor awarded in the management consulting profession. James is the author of the groundbreaking book "Managing Differently: Getting 100% from 100% of your people 100% of the time" which changed the conversation about diversity and has been adopted as source material for a number of major MBA programs including Kellogg School of Management. His second book, "Epiphany: Finding Truth without Losing Faith" is designed to change the conversation about religious diversity.
James is also a spiritual teacher and a serial non-profit leader. He has chaired half a dozen major non-profits like Habitat for Humanity and served as Vice-Chair of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.