Dr. Wanda Wallace
Managing Partner, Leadership Coach, Podcast Host, and Speaker.
Fields of expertise:
Dr. Wanda Wallace, Managing Partner of Leadership Forum, helps leaders and teams improve the quality of their conversations in every aspect of organizational life from team debate to inclusivity, career goals, feedback cultures and strategic insight. Better conversations result in better relationships which lead to better performance.
Wanda speaks, coaches, conducts seminars and works with top teams in global corporations around the world. She is passionate about helping leaders recognize the choices they have, see the consequences, take control of their careers and build more inclusive teams.
With her last book, she draws on her experience watching men and women transition to more senior roles where the team knows more than the leader. This can be a trap for expert executors transitioning to roles with a greater span of responsibility. You Can’t Know It All: Leading in an Age of Deep Expertise explains what to do when it’s time to step outside of your comfort zone.
Her newest book is Taking Charge of Your Career: Your Blueprint for Success (due out in December 2026). In addition, she is working on a book about how to create a strong, connected top team.
Dr. Wallace has forged close relationships with a number of blue-chip clients across many industries such as those in health care (AbbVie, GlaxoSmithKline, LifeScience Dynamics, Medtronic, Merck), insurance (Allianz Group, MetLife, Prudential, BCBSNC), manufacturing (Siemens, Ford Motor Company, ams Osram, Navistar, Kennametal, UPM, Ledvance), financial services (AllianceBernstein, American Express, Blackstone, Blackrock, Deutsche Bank, JPMorganChase, Morgan Stanley, UBS, HSBC), accounting (Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers), legal (Herbert Smith Freehills, Linklaters, Norton Rose, Dentons), hospitality (Four Seasons), telecommunications (Ericsson, British Telecom, Vodafone) and oil and gas (British Petroleum). She has also worked with start-ups.
As a consultant and educator who is equally at ease in the distinct worlds of business and research, she is an integrator of ideas, putting the best of what she sees to practical application.
She also is the author of Reaching the Top: Factors that Impact the Careers and Retention of Senior Women Leaders along two reports co-authored with Corporate Research Forum entitled Diversity and Business Performance (2011) and Developing and Broadening Specialists (2012). In addition, she hosts a weekly podcast entitled “Out of the Comfort Zone”. She describes her podcast as her learning lab where she explores new ideas in collaboration with leading thinkers and integrates those ideas into her practice.
Dr. Wallace received her Ph.D. from the Psychology Department at Duke University with special emphasis on cognitive and thought processes. Prior to founding Leadership Forum, she was an associate professor in Marketing and then Associate Dean of Executive Education at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and Executive Vice President at Duke Corporate Education, Inc.
