C. Marie Taylor, MBA

C. Marie Taylor is a leadership, diversity, and race equity consultant with over 25 years of expertise in guiding organizations to establish safe, equitable, inclusive, and people-centered work environments. Accordingly, creating workspaces that see the full value of Black, Indigenous, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, other people of color is her primary goal for the companies and organizations that secure her consultation services. Ms. Taylor understands that innovation ignites, authentic personal relationships form, and productivity and morale rise when companies and organizations engage in exploring matters of diversity, inclusivity, and race equity issues. Ms. Taylor’s talent in cultivating a growth mindset for her clients is proven when diverse community partners can complement each other while propelling their independent work to new levels. In her immediate past role as the President & Chief Executive Officer of Leadership Montgomery, Ms. Taylor was the organization’s major thought leader - creating racial equity training and technical assistance programming. During her tenure, she embraced innovation while promoting cultural sensitivity to reposition the organization as a leader in the region. Additionally, her vision for the organization increased and diversified Leadership Montgomery’s revenue and programming. While at Leadership Montgomery, Ms. Taylor completed a race equity assessment of the organization to include its operations, staffing, initiatives, board, and vendors to ensure that the organization was safe, equitable, inclusive, and people-centered, and representative of the county demographics. Her understanding that “representation matters” led to changes in the organization’s values and programming. Her development of the Racial Equity Action Leadership (REAL) Inclusion Program for Leadership Montgomery. Prior to her time at Leadership Montgomery, Ms. Taylor served as the Executive Director of Greater Washington Community Foundation of Montgomery County where she initiated, led, and fund-raised for a study to research the opportunity gap of Black and African American Youth in Montgomery County, MD. Her work on this project led to the creation of the Children’s Opportunity Fund which provides public and private funds toward closing the opportunity gap of low-income children and families in the county. Ms. Taylor is a fan of single glasses of high-quality vodka, an indoor cycling fanatic, loves vacationing, making people laugh, and baking as she won her partner over with her noteworthy strawberry-rhubarb pie.