2023 Top Consultants: Lauren Wilkins

Lauren Wilkins is a biracial Black woman who grew up with strong values of education, kindness and service. She leads with a quiet confidence that is, perhaps, unexpected from an NCAA Varsity Women's Athlete. But that's just part of why she is so successful building team cultures: she creates the right space at the right time for others to take their shot.

After graduating with honors in Spanish and Philosophy from Loyola Marymount University, Lauren started working in experiential marketing, leading cross-functional projects at creative agencies.

Her interest in change and program management led her to work in consulting with North Highland and then Point B. Her career accelerated as she led large-scale change management programs within complex, matrixed organizations for customers and led Marketing and Community Impact for Point B's Portland office.

Unable to ignore the strong call-to-action she felt from her own lived experience as a person of color, she joined the inaugural cohort of CEO Action for Racial Equity's Fellowship where she drove agile ways of working and discovered her passion for public policy. She continues this work today as Point B's Portland leader and a board member of the local nonprofit Rose Haven.

What has motivated you to excel over the course of your career?

Curiosity. Growing up, my mother always emphasized the importance of education and hard work, often as intrinsically linked traits; as a first-gen immigrant from the Caribbean, she prioritized opportunities for us to do as much hands-on learning as we could get and encouraged us to be diligent in our discoveries. With a rich diversity of options to explore in a rapidly changing world, I continue to search for ways I can remain open to creativity and possibility; especially, as I continue to learn and understand how things map together and their interconnective tissue.

In many ways, I feel like I'm still discovering my passion, and it's taken a long time for me to appreciate that my reluctance to plan out every step in my career is a huge value add for me. Casting a wider net, I get to uncover how and why things work together the way they do, who they do (or don't) serve, and consider ways to tailor more efficient, accessible and enjoyable outcomes. I've never been one to enjoy limitations for the sake of the familiar, and I tend to disprove others when their limitations box me in.

What has been the biggest factor in your success so far?

There isn't one, but rather two major themes that have consistently helped me grow. Firstly, I am deeply interested in understanding the connections between people and the inputs that help shape our experiences. As such, storytelling, human-centered design, and systems thinking are titans dominating each milestone in my career. By working to understand the impact and importance of change (this includes assessing environment, scope, beneficiaries, intersectionality, etc.), we can find compelling paths to communicate that encourage a higher potential for comprehension/action, and still invite room to evolve—even if that means starting fresh.

Secondly, I am very protective of my personal brand and my integrity. Growing up in athletics with incredibly talented siblings, my competitive drive and work ethic energized aspects of my growth, but over the years the approach and outcomes have shifted. As a woman of color, I actively work against placing importance on first attempt perfectionism—despite the external pressures to be a Black model minority. Instead, I'm working on consistently giving myself space for iterative learning, which fosters collaboration and encourages client and internal teams to innovate together.

Like most people, I want to find enjoyment my work and be proud of the projects my name attaches to. As I define and refine my personal brand, I want to be a genuine demonstration that people are valued and a representation of continued growth for me, my clients, colleagues and community.

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

The variety and the massive landscape. I've found such intelligent, compassionate, funny, and interesting people within our firm and across customer engagements. I am extremely grateful for the innate diversity of colleagues the industry unintentionally provides by moving us from client to client. It's a pleasure to be able to connect thought leadership across industries, capabilities, and technologies to support better ways of working for customers.

I'm constantly learning and feel as though I've also been able to sample multiple careers during my time consulting. For example, it was personally rewarding to take my consulting skillset and apply it to the CEO Action for Racial Equity fellowship, from establishing internal ways of working to delivering presentations and one-pagers to Senate staffers around the importance of racial equity and health equity in policy management (during a public health emergency). After two years of applying human centered design, executive presentations, stakeholder/persona profiling, scrum/agile mindset shifts, project and change management, and more, it's humbling and motivating to take a step back and see all of that meaningful work influence one of the bigger platforms in our country.

What is your proudest achievement to date?

Being able to infuse topics, like equity, into corporate America. While I do not chant daily mantras of DEI before each meeting, it is very difficult for me to turn off or separate all that I learned in CEO Action for Racial Equity from my foundational people-focused approach.

Specifically, taking learnings from the public policy space and helping to further develop Point B's point of view and go to market strategy on the inequities of climate change. What started out as providing information and feedback for a colleague's "lunch and learn" has evolved into a published white paper, the moderation of a panel at a recent Sustainable Brands conference, and educational materials for employees across Point B and the Portland-area DEI Consortium (a partnership of 4 local consultancies who created a unique peer-to-peer network of shared resources and education for better DEI outcomes and client-service-delivery). Getting to see an "impact idea" gain momentum and influence positive change has been a highlight of my career.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

"Who is on your personal Board of Directors?"

I have a sticky note on my desk with that question and that question alone. Thinking about my personal board of directors is an actionable way to build my network of supporters, mentors and challengers. It makes me think about what I want to achieve, the traits I want to emulate and where I've built (or need to build) relationships with experienced folks in my network. Here are a few other key things I think about with my personal board of directors:

You do not have to go it alone. There are others around you with experience. People are invested in your success. Ask for help or guidance. Be intentional about who you look to for support. You need more than one person to challenge you and make you work for that 'yes.' Maintain those relationships. Be sure to schedule those 'board meetings' or 'board 1:1s'.

A personal board means they're invested in you…not your role at your company. Take time away from work to take steps toward your other goals.

What does this recognition mean to you?

Candidly, I'm grappling with a little bit of disbelief and a healthy serving of humility as I look at the candidates and prior award winners. I am grateful to be recognized for this honor and know that my successes owe credit to the guidance and innovation of my teammates, mentors, "work families," and the many times I didn't get it right. For this nomination, I would also like to send a sincere thank you to Point B for being open to different perspectives, and a special thank you to those people in my life who say "go for it" and have faith in my potential to build a better future state, even if that means stepping away from the familiar.