Our Team

Dr. Marilyn Buckner has had an over 20 year close professional and personal relationship with Inclusive Leadership Group (ILG) Co-Founder and Advisory Board Chair Charlotte F. Hughes. Marilyn is Senior Consultant, and Assessment Director. Marilyn’s motivation for joining Inclusive Leaders Group is to serve as an ally to Charlotte’s mission by designing systems and innovative leadership interventions that support work cultures with gender, social, and racial equity.

Marilyn delivers educational workshops on creating, managing, and implementing large-scale cultural change and inclusive leadership development. She provides a wide range of consulting services for ILG clients in cultural transformation, including strategic planning, organizational design, vision/mission development, developmental leadership assessment centers, and executive coaching.

Marilyn has a Ph.D. in Counseling and Management from Georgia State University with a specialty in Rehabilitation Counseling. She is President of the Human Resource Planning Society where she comes in contact with senior HR professionals in many of the leading-edge companies in the world.

Marilyn has worked with medical and pharmaceutical organizations on a variety of initiatives such as the following: change management (Warner Lambert) leadership development (Solvay Pharmaceuticals), strategic planning (CEOs and Board members of the Alabama Hospital Association and Emory University), Performance Management (Tidewater Healthcare in Virginia and Georgia Baptist Hospital), and team building, organizational design and change management (Baxter/Ohmeda merger) and coaching the executives (CEO, COO, CFO, CNO of hospitals) for Cambio Healthcare. Other clients have included Bank of America, GE Capital, Home Depot, Equifax, Southern Company and The Weather Channel.

Marilyn was director of strategic planning and human resources development for National Data Corporation—a provider of information systems to retail, medical, telecommunications, and financial industries. She was responsible for executive and management development, strategic planning, sales training, and quality training. Previously, she was the head of corporate and international human resources development for The Coca-Cola Company, where she was responsible for the development of several human resource development systems including succession staffing, leadership development and performance appraisal.

Marilyn’s passion for creating opportunities in which organizations and individuals can grow and thrive influenced her decision to establish National Training Systems, Inc. (NTS) one of the nation’s leading experts in leadership development, talent and career management, organization effectiveness, change management. Through NTS, she began her journey with Inclusive Leaders Group as Principal Consultant, Assessment and Coaching Director.