Dr. Amy Tolbert

Amy S. Tolbert, PhD, CSP, develops multicultural organizations and individuals by bringing cutting-edge topics such as multicultural and inclusion initiatives, leadership competency development, managing to style, and creating breakthrough teams. She is principal of ECCO (Energizing Cultural Change in Organizations), which specializes in increasing individuals’ productivity and organizations’ profitability through e-learning, technology and facilitated learning.

Addressing diversity and multicultural issues, cross-cultural training, and managing a diverse workforce, Dr. Tolbert has researched multicultural competencies needed for today’s global organization. In 2019, she released the second edition of “Reversing the Ostrich Approach to Diversity: Pulling Your Head out of the Sand,” a timely answer to the renewed urgency for actionable inclusion skills. The tool presents five simple actions to increase inclusive behaviors in the workplace. The Ostrich book also has been translated and distributed in Saudi Arabia and China. Amy has also co-authored and presented the Discovering Diversity Profile, a popular self-assessment tool, and is a founding partner of Spectra Diversity, a technology assessment firm offering the only validated tool to measure both an organization and the individual for domestic inclusion efforts.

Amy has served several terms as national vice chair for the Professional Expertise Group on Diversity with the National Speakers Association (NSA). She served as president for NSA-Minnesota and serves on the hrconnection Advisory Board and the ILSEP Board. She earned her Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation with NSA as well. The CSP is the speaking profession’s international measure of experience and skill. Fewer than 10 percent of the speakers who belong to the International Federation for Professional Speakers hold this professional designation. She was awarded Member of the Year, Next Level Award, the Mark LeBlanc Award for excellence in the speaking industry and, in 2019, was inducted into the Minnesota Speaker Hall of Fame.

Published by Pfeiffer, Amy has contributed a chapter in the book, “Developing Talent for Organizational Results: Training Tools from the Best in the Field.” She is a contributing author to “The Princess Principle: Women helping women discover their royal spirit.” She also authored a video training program, Open Mind, Open World: Improving Intercultural Interactions, which includes leader guides and video clips to customize a series of global education workshops, as well as a diversity and inclusion version for the U.S. marketplace. Amy consults and trains internationally in the areas of creating a global mind-set, multicultural competency development, increasing influence in organizations, managing within a diverse workforce, motivation and leadership skills.

As a fellow at Carlson Executive Education Center, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Dr. Tolbert earned her doctorate in human resource development, focusing on international/cross-cultural and diversity education/training, from the University of Minnesota. She continues to support her alma mater by serving as adjunct faculty for several annual programs at Carlson Executive Education.