Ancella Livers

Ancella is a skilled leadership development professional who has worked with thousands of managers and executives over the last 15 years. While most of her clients have been in Fortune 500 companies, Ancella has also worked with government agencies and nonprofits. For 12 years, Ancella worked at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) where she held a number of leadership roles including global director of open enrollment programs, global program manager of CCL’s flagship offering the Leadership Development Program (LDP®) and program manger of several other programs including the Foundations of Leadership, the African-American program and the Women’s Leadership program. She also served as faculty for open enrollment and custom clients. Further, she has deep expertise on diversity issues, particularly those focusing on African Americans and women. Ancella left CCL for several years to join The Executive Leadership Council® (ELC) where she served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Leadership Development and Research. While at the ELC, Ancella worked with some of the nation’s highest ranking corporate executives. Prior to working in the leadership development field, Ancella was an assistant professorship in the School of Journalism at West Virginia University. She also spent a decade as a newspaper journalist and held roles as acting business editor and Capitol Hill reporter for Gannett News Service.

Ancella has returned to CCL as Senior Faculty on the Design and Delivery team. In this role, she works with global and national clients to help them gain clarity around their leadership needs and to co-create dynamic solutions to meet those needs.

Ancella holds a B.S. in Mass Communications from Hampton Institute, a M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Carnegie Mellon University. Her assessment certifications include 360 By Design®, Benchmarks®, SYMLOG®, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, Voices® 360, Conflict Dynamics Profile®, CPI-260 and Work Place Big 5.

Ancella has also written extensively. She is co-author of the book Leading in Black and White: Working across the Racial Divide and of the Harvard Business Review article “Dear White Boss.” She has written a chapter “Coaching People of Color,” which appears in The CCL Handbook of Coaching: A Guide for the Leader Coach and she has written the essay “Black Women in Management” published in Vol.1 of the three volume set of Gender, Race, & Ethnicity in the Workplace. Most recently, she has co-authored the chapter “Miasma: The Dynamics of Difference” in the casebook, Leading Across Differences and is author of several columns in Positively Successful magazine. She was recently named one of the nation’s top 90 women mentor leaders by Women of Wealth magazine and is a member of the Antioch University Board of Governors, Triad Stage Board of Trustees.

Education

• Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University (1993 — 1998)
• Masters Carnegie Mellon University (1991 — 1993)
• Masters Northwestern University (1980 — 1981)
• Bachelors Hampton University (1974 — 1978)

Companies

• Leadership Solution s Provider Center for Creative Leadership (2020)
• Chief Innovation Officer Talent Dimensions (2018)
• Chief Innovation Officer Talent Dimensions (2018)
• President PRISM International, Inc. (2018 — 2020)
• Senior Faculty Center for Creative Leadership (2011 — 2018)
• Executive Director, Institute for Leadership Development & Resarch The Executive Leadership Council (2007 — 2011)
• Group Director, Global Open Enrollment Programs Center for Creative Leadership (1995 — 2007)
• Assistant Professor, P.I. Reed School of Journalism West Virginia University (1989 — 1995)
• Capitol Hill Reporter Gannett News Service (1986 — 1989)