Amanda Shaffer
Founder and Principal
Company: Shaffer Coaching, LLCRole: Session Presenter
Amanda Shaffer is a professional coach and diversity consultant with extensive experience supporting individuals and institutions to develop their leadership capacity and embrace diversity. Whether she is facilitating professional development programs, coaching leaders, or helping underrepresented faculty advance in their careers, Amanda’s work is defined by her dedication to equity, inclusion, and social progress.
Since 2003 Amanda has been involved with multiple NSF ADVANCE awards focused on improving gender equity in STEM disciplines and is currently a volunteer facilitator for the ADVANCE GEO partnership. Her career advancement program, “To Tenure and Beyond” (initiated under NSF Award #0540800), was published in Forward to Professorship: Academic Leadership Development in Science and Engineering (2015). She has written several diversity guidebooks and toolkits, including an Implicit Bias Search Committee toolkit for the national HERC.
In addition to coaching academic faculty and administrators across the country, Amanda designs workshops focused on career advancement and diversity education. Her workshops include topics such as Reducing Bias in Evaluation (Search and P&T Committees), Communication for DEI Excellence, Building a Mindful Career, Imposter Syndrome, Bystander Intervention and White Fragility
From 2013 – 2018 while at Case Western Reserve University, she helped found and direct the Ohio Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC). She served as a national Advisory Board member for HERC and was the Vice Chair for the 2015-16 academic year.
In 2018 she wrote and produced a Cultural Awareness video for new employees at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and in 2019 received the UAB President’s Diversity Champion Award for her significant achievements in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion.
Amanda is a Gestalt Professional Certified Coach (GPCC) and is ACC-certified through the International Coach Federation. She earned both a bachelors and a master’s degree in Philosophy from Cleveland State University and holds a “Woman in Leadership” certificate from the Weatherhead School of Management. She is trained in 360-feedback assessment, Emotional Intelligence, Appreciative Inquiry, Negotiation and Conflict Management, and Mindful Facilitation.
A founding member of the Ohio Diversity Officers Collaborative (2008), Amanda served on the board National Advisory Board for HERC (2014 – 2018). She was the founder and artistic director of the nonprofit Red Hen Productions Feminist Theatre (Cleveland, 1995-2005) and volunteers with national and local nonprofit and social justice organizations.