Organizational Impact
A scholar who brings practical experience and intense research to issues critical and relevant in today’s business, social, and political environments: leading through crisis; diversity; and equality in compensation between men and women.
Corporate Initiatives
Erika has helped executives lead their organizations by developing skills in the following areas:
- Decision-making under pressure
- Managing, learning from, and seizing opportunity from crisis
- Managing the change process after a crisis
- Workplace diversity
- Building trust in the workplace
Her corporate clients include Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Freddie Mac, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Merrill Lynch, and Farmers Insurance. She has also helped numerous companies unique to their respective communities, such as Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, VA, and Clark Construction, in Bethesda, MD.
Since 2004 Erika James and Lynn Perry Wooten co-author a bi-annual report for the Executive Leadership Council, the most recent of which is the 2008 Census of African Americans Serving on Boards of Directors of Fortune 500 Companies.
Inspirational Speaking
Erika has not only inspired employees at the corporate level, but professional and academic members of numerous national associations on topics including:
- Leading Positively: Individual Differences that Influence the Ability to See Crisis as Opportunity, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, 2008
- Black Women Rising: State of Affairs of Black Female Corporate Directors, Executive Leadership Council, Black Women on Wall Street Summit, Keynote Presenter
- A Woman’s Worth: Composition of Compensation Packages for Male and Female Top Executives, Strategic Management Society, 2007
- Crisis as Opportunity: Toward a Reconceptualization of Crisis Management, Academy of Management, 2006
- Decision Making Under Pressure, Institute for Management Studies, 2006
Advisor to Political Leaders
Today’s economic environment is demanding attention to the current and relevant topics of leading through crisis, diversity, and building trust in the workplace. Our national and local political leaders recognize this and are building initiatives around these issues in their administrations. Erika’s research and insight can be valuable in the planning and implementation of such programs and policies.
Erika has collaborated with community leaders in implementing special initiatives, such as the Light Up New Orleans project. And she has done extensive leadership development work with the Brookings Institution, as well as the Federal Executive Institute, which develops career leaders for the federal government.