GDEIB Authors
Nene Molefi
South Africa time zone
Julie O'Mara (retired)
Pacific time zone USA
Alan Richter, Ph.D.
Eastern time zone USA
Nene is the President and owner of Mandate Molefi HR Consultants. She is an experienced consultant with a track record that spans over 22 years. She was born in Soweto, South Africa. Her work involves consulting & facilitation in Whole System Culture Change; Transformation, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion & Values Driven Leadership interventions for large and medium-sized organizations.
Nene is an international speaker with a creative storytelling approach to sharing complex issues of South Africa’s journey to democracy – helping participants navigate the difficult terrain of race and intersectionality in society and their workplace. She has facilitated numerous dialogue sessions and moderated courageous conversations with Boards, Executive Committees & Senior leadership across different countries and a variety of industries and sectors. She has written many articles and is an author of a book, A Journey of Diversity and Inclusion in South Africa: Guidelines for Leading Inclusively. She has been mentioned in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index report of 2018 as an example of an international thought leader on Diversity and Inclusion.
She sits on the Advisory structure of the Auditor General of South Africa. Nene studied at the University of Fort Hare (SA), University of Cape Town (SA) and York St John University (UK)where she obtained Masters in Leading Innovation and Change. Her aim is to use dialogue to show leaders how to lead equitably and inclusively in meeting their organizational objectives and advance social cohesion in society.
For over 40 years, Julie was an active DEI consultant as president of O’Mara and Associates, an organization development consulting firm. She is considered a pioneer for her work having been engaged in numerous successful initiatives with major clients.
She is active in several diversity organizations and often collaborates with others to advance the field. She is a shareholder and former Board of Directors member of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and is an Authorized Partner for Wiley’s DiSC® and Five Behaviours products. A former National President of the American Society for Training and Development (now ATD), Julie was instrumental in developing professional competencies for the training and development field. She is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage, a bestseller published by Jossey-Bass, and author of Diversity Activities and Training Designs, published by Pfeiffer and Company.
She has received several awards for her leadership and diversity work, including named to the Economists Global Diversity List 2015; a Diversity Legacy Leader by The Forum on Workplace Inclusion; Pioneer of Diversity by the Diversity Journal; ASTD’s Torch Award for outstanding service; the ASTD Women’s Network Professional Leadership Development Award; the Honored Instructor award for outstanding service from the University of California Extension, Berkeley; Ben Bostic Trainer of the Year Award from ASTD’s Multicultural Network; and ASTD’s Valuing Differences Award. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Alan is the Founder and President of QED Consulting, has consulted to organizations for over 30 years in multiple capacities and specializes in the areas of leadership, ethics and values, diversity and inclusion, culture and change. He has designed and developed innovative global diversity and inclusion curricula.
He is the co-author of the award-winning Global Diversity Game and the Global Diversity Survey as well as the Global Gender Intelligence Assessment. In addition to the GDEIB, he has also co-authored the Global Ethics & Integrity Benchmarks, which follows an approach similar to the GDEIB. Alan is also the coeditor of the recent global study: An Inquiry into Global Values: Through the Lens of Comparative Constitutions (Hart 2015).
Alan has been a presenter at many conferences and has delivered workshops on DEI and ethics around the world for a wide variety of clients both for-profit and nonprofit. The United Nations and many of its agencies have been major clients for decades. He has worked in over 50 countries across all continents. He has an M.A. and a B.A.B.Sc. from the University of Cape Town, and a PhD in Philosophy from Birkbeck College, London University. He currently lives in New York City, New York, USA.