Meet Charlotte

Charlotte Hughes is the Co-Founder and Chair of Inclusive Leaders Group. She is a renowned author and keynote speaker committed to enabling organizations, teams, and individuals to reach their full potential and benefit the markets and communities they serve. Charlotte previously served as CEO and Principal Consultant for ILG from the firm’s launch in 2019 until October 31, 2024 when she became Chairman. With over 20 years of experience partnering with leaders inside Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits across diverse sectors, Charlotte is a catalyst that believes in a holistic, strategic approach to achieve business goals and sustain results over time.

She draws on her extensive lived experiences as a Black American woman, in corporate, health care and non-profit global organizations. Charlotte experienced workplace bias, microaggressions, and both gender and racial discrimination. These experiences bring context to her speaking, training, and strategic advisory consulting engagements on the issues of DEI including, inclusive leadership, intersectionality, allyship, and inclusive talent management.

Empowering HR leaders and teams to embed DEI throughout the talent life cycle is Charlotte’s specialty. Through current research and data-driven insights, she helps leaders execute inclusive daily practices with commitment and alignment with their teams serving as the source for competitive advantage.

Charlotte is a leading authority and bold catalyst of aligning an organization’s DEIB strategic plan with its overall business strategy. As an award-winning consultant, educator, keynote speaker, author, and practitioner for DEIB efforts across corporate, government, non-profit, and education sectors, she helps organizations break barriers and integrate DEIB into their business frameworks with a human-centered approach.

She is a Certified Diversity Professional (CDP)®, Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach®, and a Strategic HR Business Partner (sHRBP®). As a result, Inclusive Leaders Group approaches DEIB performance consulting as a strategic process that produces business results by maximizing the performance of people in organizations.

Charlotte earned her BS in Human Ecology from Cornell University and MS in Human Resources Management at New York Institute of Technology.

Charlotte says, “Healthy, and vibrant workforce and workplace cultures attract great talent for their unique differences…visible and invisible. Inclusive leaders empower everyone to contribute to growth through innovation, continuous learning, and development, transforming ourselves to continuously improve, for all to belong, and collectively, do their absolute best work.”