Board of Directors ~

Lauren Choate, VP, Leadership & Development

Lauren Choate is an experienced businesswoman who has spent her career in Human Resources, primarily creating and developing innovative succession planning systems to change the way companies manage talent.  Her positive energy and presence, innovative solutions, leadership and facilitation skills garner rave reviews from clients and colleagues alike. 

Lauren learned succession planning at BP who uses it extensively to manage its global talent base.  After BP, Lauren went to work at GE Lighting as Manager, HR Planning, responsible for the “Session C” process in Lighting.  Since then, she’s successfully introduced succession planning and talent reviews in Merrill Lynch, ACNielson, Readers Digest and Great-West Life.  At CH2M HILL, they have a long standing commitment to talent management and Lauren installed a system to support their process.  She’s also been in leadership development roles for Dunn & Bradstreet, and HR Generalist roles in ACNielson and OppenheimerFunds.  Lauren is now at Western Union, supporting the vision of the new CEO in leveraging talent as a key competitive advantage.

Lauren is a long-standing member of the Human Resource Planning Society, a global association of HR professionals, having started the Northeast Ohio affiliate a number of years ago, and recently started the Rocky Mountain affiliate in Denver, serving as President.  She’s participated in many workshops and annual conferences, having been a presenter at Succession Planning workshops as well.

Lauren is a skilled executive coach, applying her experience, training and business knowledge to improve the effectiveness of the leaders that work with her. Throughout Lauren’s professional experience and education, she has maintained the perspective that Human Resource’s strategies drive competitive business advantage.  She has successfully created leadership development strategies, succession planning, talent review processes and retention and development strategies.  Lauren has launched Training Curriculums that offer leadership and management programs, along with supervisory skills, new employee orientation and professional skill building.  She’s played an integral role in many employee surveys used to prioritize initiatives that improve the business and drive a culture that supports the vision.  Lauren strives to continually improve the impact of HR in the companies she’s worked for, leveraging technology to simplify the work with positive business results.

Lauren has a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MBA in General Management from Case Western Reserve University.