Melinda Wolfe

Melinda Wolfe has served as Chief People Officer and led talent initiatives with a passionate focus on diversity, equity and inclusion at companies including 2U, GLG, Pearson, Bloomberg, American Express and Goldman Sachs. Across industry, she has joined leadership teams to optimize organizational design, culture and human resource priorities, while driving outcomes for employee engagement, productivity and profitability. Ms. Wolfe began her career in public finance at Merrill Lynch where she managed billions of dollars of project finance and public power transactions for public and private sector clients.

Ms. Wolfe has held the chief HR role at private, private equity-backed and public companies, all with global reach and each at critical inflection points in their size and evolution. She has partnered with CEOs and leadership teams, as a thought leader, coach and operator to achieve organic growth strategies, integrate powerful acquisitions and downsize through divestitures and contraction of challenged businesses. She has worked with company boards and board committees on succession planning, executive talent acquisition, and alignment of competitive compensation programs, focusing on compliance and regular reporting of people practices. As a company leader, she has transformed HR processes and systems and encouraged a sense of belonging and community to deepen culture and increase retention of employees in regions across the globe, particularly Millennials and Gen Z. Additionally, Ms. Wolfe has overseen Social Impact and Corporate Social Responsibility efforts that have been a centerpiece of employee engagement efforts.

In addition to her work in the private sector, Ms. Wolfe holds several leadership positions in the non-profit sector. Currently, she chairs the board of the ZanaAfrica Foundation and serves as a board member of Echoing Green, Coqual (formerly, The Center for Talent Innovation), W.O.M.E.N. In America and Generation W . She previously served on the NYC Mayor’s Commission on Women and on advisory boards for several academic institutions including the Dalton School, Barnard’s Athena Center, Duke University, Washington University and the School of Public and International Affairs at Columbia, where she also taught as an Adjunct Faculty Member.

Ms. Wolfe is a frequent speaker at conferences on a range of subjects including talent management, and diversity, equity and inclusion. She regularly facilitates executive teams across sectors on strategy and execution of HR initiatives and coaches emerging leaders on career considerations. She received her undergraduate degree from Washington University and her graduate degree at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.