Julie O'Mara
Julie O'Mara, President and Founder

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Julie O'Mara is president of O'Mara and Associates, an organizational development consulting firm specializing in leadership, workplace effectiveness, facilitation, and the managing diversity & inclusion. She has worked with a wide variety of clients in private and public sectors. Some assignments help guide major organizational strategy and culture change efforts over several years. Other assignments are shorter in duration. In addition to consulting, she designs and delivers presentations, training programs, and trains trainers. She is a shareholder and supporter of Berrett-Koehler (BK) Publishers. BK's mission is connecting people and ideas to create a world that works for all.

As a Wiley Authorized Partner, she uses and provides learning tools including the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ and Everything DiSC products and has done so through predecessor companies since 1978. Known as a strategic thinker, Julie is an associate of the Management Research Group and is certified to use its Leadership 360®, Strategic Directions, and leadership coaching processes.

She is active in the Diversity & Inclusion profession. One of her most significant contributions is the Global D&I Benchmarks: Standards for Organizations Around the World Global Diversity a free research study with many tools. The Tenth Anniversary Edition of the GDIB, co-authored with Alan Richter, Ph.D. and 95 Expert Panelists around the world, was the third significant researched update since 2006. She has received several awards for her diversity work including being named to the Economist's Global Diversity List for 2015; a Diversity Legacy Leaders by The Forum on Workplace Inclusion; and Pioneer of Diversity by The Diversity Journal. She also currently serves on The Winters Group Advisory Board and the strategic advisory board for the Forum on Workplace Inclusion.

A former National President of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD, now ATD), Julie has been a volunteer leader for ATD since 1977 and currently is a reviewer for its Workplace Learning Awards. She belongs to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), having served on its Task Force to develop Diversity and Inclusion Standards. She has taught OD and Assessment at the SFSU College of Extended Learning and 360-degree feedback at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For 10 years she was adjunct faculty at U.C. Berkeley Extension and John F. Kennedy universities. She is an Emeritus Member of the Diversity Collegium, professionals dedicated to advancing the field of diversity & inclusion through research and learning; and a Sponsor Emeritus of Diversity 2000, a learning community of diversity professionals. She belongs to the Community Dialogue Group.

She has written chapters in several books, including Everyday White People Confront Racial & Social Injustice by Moore, Penick-Parks and Michael (2015) and in Diversity in the Workplace: The Practice of Inclusion by Ferdman and Deane (2015). She is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage, a bestseller published by Jossey-Bass in 1991; and author of Diversity Activities and Training Designs, a manual of activities, lecturettes, and guidelines for effective diversity training, published by Pfeiffer and Company in 1994. In 2001, PrimeLearning developed five eLearning diversity modules based on her work.

In 2001 and 2002 Julie served as a content resource for MemeWorks, an Internet company in the performance improvement arena. She is the former director of communications for The Marmon Group, a billion-dollar international conglomerate of heavy industrial firms based in Chicago. She also was supervisor of marketing communications for Whirlpool Corporation, where she was not only part of the team that introduced the Trash Masher Compactor, but also served as consumer spokesperson appearing on radio, television, and in print. She has a B.S. from the University of Missouri.

Among Julie's professional honors are 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; the Ben Bostic Trainer of the Year Award from ASTD's Multicultural Network; and ASTD's Valuing Differences Award presented to her and the Royal Bank of Canada.

© 2014, 2011, 2006 by Julie O'Mara and Alan Richter. The GDIB is shared at no cost for all to use. However, you must seek permission. See permissions agreement information from the authors or at www.diversitycollegium.org.