Lisa M. Sanchez is the vice president for Human Resources at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA. She leads a team dedicated to enriching the experiences and engagement for faculty and staff. Critical to this work is Sanchez’s direct work in diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and organizational culture.
She is featured in PrimeTime55+, a Who’s Who of influential and phenomenal black women in electoral politics, advanced degrees, education, public advocacy, and business ownership, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, I AM QUEEN Magazine, and is a proud member of a powerful collective #WinWithBlackWomen.
Sanchez is the author of “Looking for Love in a Garbage Can. A Journey of Healing: How I Survived an Alcoholic Environment.” It chronicles her difficult childhood living in a violent and dysfunctional alcoholic environment. It’s a riveting tale of surviving her father’s drunken episodes, child molestation, and many dysfunctional relationships she would also encounter. Yet, her story also describes healing and a journey of forgiveness and self-discovery through self-empowerment.
She is the Founder and CEO of JustDigIn2It LLC, a life coach business created to help people who come from dysfunctional families and relationships break through their challenges and mental blocks so they can live more fulfilled and productive lives.
With this bandwidth of experience, Sanchez has served on numerous panels on DEI, organizational culture, the future of work as it relates to managing and leading during a pandemic as well as post-pandemic strategies. She has appeared on television, radio, podcasts, and magazine features as she tells her mental health journey in her book.
She is the co-founder of The Positive Platform: Lifting and Living with Lisa and Lori, a company formed to provide educational programs to inspire and empower HR practitioners, women, and girls to live their best and most fulfilled lives through self-empowerment and self-leadership.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Sanchez attended Palisades High School. She received her bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from California State University, Northridge, and a master’s degree in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix.
She is a single mother of one son, Bryan, and resides in Los Angeles, CA.
Lori Gentles, chief people officer for city government and author of “Oh SLAP! My Choices Determine My Destiny!” is a high-energy, self-starter on a mission to help great people become greater. Her book will not let the reader escape the concept of total personal responsibility for the outcomes in their life. Excuses are useless and reinforce entitlement and victimhood. “Oh SLAP!” is a dose of tough love with the goal of awakening the inner spirit of individual greatness.
She is a radical believer in the power of intelligent, intentional, inspired, individual Choice (#iChoice). She has parlayed her years of experience as a human resources leader to start The Choices Company. Her flagship program, Employeeship: The Path to Leadership is a refreshing departure from the conventional and reinforces total personal responsibility instead of entitlement. Her message of iChoice and her commitment to helping highly self-motivated individuals pursue possibilities without limitation has garnered the praise of peers and business leaders. “What you own, you can change” is her motto.
A local and international speaker, Gentles has presented in Asia, Africa and the U.S. on topics such as women empowerment, breaking the cycle of poverty through socially conscious international recruiting, education and employment, leadership and performance management.
She is the co-founder of The Positive Platform: Lifting and Living with Lisa and Lori, a company formed to provide educational programs to motivate and empower HR practitioners, women and girls to live their best and most fulfilled lives through self-empowerment and self-leadership.
Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, she has lived in Los Angeles for 20 years. Gentles received a bachelor’s degree in Interpersonal Communication from Arizona State University and an MBA in International Business from Saint Mary’s College of California.
This is the time of year when we start planning to once again declare our commitment to achieving our goals. Whether it’s to retire, implement new HR programs, or get healthy, we always approach the new year with vim and vigor only to become a statistic of those that start the year with hopeful resolutions that are rarely completed.
