Wendy Lewis
(she/her/hers) 

Wendy Lewis is the founder and creator of AllySHIFT®, a progressive and seismic platform for advocacy and sustainable equity.  She is known for shifting the transactional to the transformative and considers herself an evangelist for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Equity.  Her company, Wendy Lewis, LLC is a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion practice firm whose focus is empathetic leadership and "allyship sustainability".

Wendy is known for her keen ability to build action through intelligence, diplomacy, trust, and consensus-building. As McDonald's former Global Chief Diversity Officer and VP of Community Engagement, she launched the first-ever Global Gender Balance and Diversity Strategy across the enterprise. Her creation of the “Diversity IS Inclusion” mantra became ingrained throughout the business, that resulted in an education framework that targeted the development of culturally intelligent leaders,, suppliers, owner-operators, and partners. This led to the design and development of  “Food for Thought: Moving Beyond Bias," that brought immediate value and was adopted globally. She was also at the forefront of some of McDonald's most visible programs including flipping the arches for International Women’s Day, strengthening the advancement of McDonald’s Employee Business Networks, and partnering across the System to advance supplier diversity and diverse franchising programs. 

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Prior to McDonald’s, the majority of Wendy’s career had been with Major League Baseball, where she was the first ever to  hold a formal Human Resources Management role within professional sports as the head of HR for the Chicago Cubs. She quickly became known for promoting  positive action through a multifaceted approach in gaining awareness, empathy, diplomacy, credibility, trust, and  consensus-building, ultimately inspiring and guiding key stakeholders. It was during her early baseball years within the Chicago Cubs franchise where Wendy identified and developed a ground breaking opportunity to extend the diversity and inclusion practices throughout the immediate organization and into the  supply chain, partnerships, and communities.

 

Her executive promotion to the Commissioner’s Office for Major League  Baseball expanded the scope and scale of her experience and achievements.  Her strategic executions resulted in the creation of systems and collaborations that delivered in-depth analysis for the value proposition for the positive ROI.  Wendy's integrated insights and deliverables produced MLB's transformational Diversity Economic Impact Engagement, a model for advancing MLB’s workforce and supply chain initiatives league-wide.  Also, she conceived and developed another first in sports - a  centralized strategic planning process for D&I for MLB’s 30 franchises, central office, MLB Network, and MLB Advanced  Media.

 

She spearheaded many innovative programs and events, such as MLB’s Diversity Business Summit, the League’s employment and procurement conference. The Summit resulted in new talent pipelines and business partnerships  across all MLB entities.  Also, her leadership of MLB's Executive Development Program, a two-year intensive rotational experience  for selected participants to gain access and opportunity for successful careers in professional sports. Outcomes individuals advancing into senior Baseball Operations roles.  Her most profound achievement was the design, development and leadership of MLB’s Diverse Business Partners  Program (DBP).

DBP would become the premier supplier diversity initiative in Major League Sports. Thousands of diverse  business owners have achieved successful opportunities that resulted in MLB spending over $1B with diverse  business owners. 

Wendy earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and a Master of Business Administration from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

 

She is sought out as a coveted business leader, trusted partner, keynote speaker and panelist. Wendy serves on the Board of Trustees for Clark Atlanta University and Chicago Sinfonietta.

Favorite quote: 
"Faith is believing in advance what only makes sense in reverse.” - Philip Yancey.