Fatimah Gilliam

Fatimah Gilliam is an author, lawyer, consultant, public speaker, and entrepreneur. Her career combines expertise in the law, diversity, human capital, leadership, stakeholder engagement, and negotiations – helping organizations gain influence and strategic leverage, build coalitions and consensus, navigate polarizing issues and rebuild trust after crises, drive business and organizational goals, and advance workforce optimization.

She began her career as a corporate attorney on Wall Street at Cleary Gottlieb where she negotiated billion-dollar deals. At Citigroup, she leveraged her human capital and leadership acumen to oversee campus diversity recruiting for all Citi’s U.S. businesses. As the Head of Finance and Fundraising for North America for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), she utilized her management and operational skills to oversee corporate partnerships and expand WFP’s presence and strategic relationships, including negotiating partnerships with "The Hunger Games" film franchise and rapper 50 Cent that resulted in providing over 20 million meals in Africa.

Since founding The Azara Group, which provides diversity and inclusion, leadership development, negotiation, and strategy consulting services, Gilliam has served as a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 corporations, senior executives leading billion-dollar businesses, and industry thought leaders. She leverages her expertise to provide real-world guidance, empowering her clients to be strong business leaders, drive results, have successful careers, and be strategic in influencing others.

Gilliam's groundbreaking book, "Race Rules: What Your Black Friend Won’t Tell You," is an innovative, practical manual of the unwritten “rules” relating to race helping people navigate polarizing issues. The book provides much-needed how-to advice to drive equity and behavioral change. Introducing a straightforward, universal 3-step framework to unlearn racism, drive equity, and challenge misconceptions, it provides tips and tools on cross-racial interactions in people’s personal and professional lives.

As an expert negotiator, diversity disruptor, and strategist, Gilliam has been interviewed in the media and written articles on negotiating, leadership development, the sports industry, being an influencer, career strategy, and the “art of persuasion.”

She graduated from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government with a Master in Public Policy (concentrating in International Trade and Finance; Conflict Resolution and Negotiation), Columbia Law School (participating in the Mediation Clinic; earning the Parker School Certificate of Achievement in International and Comparative Law), and Wellesley College (cum laude in Economics and French). She is a board member of the Columbia Law School Association, a board member and the Careers Committee Co-Chair of the New York Wellesley Alumnae Club, and a member of the Black Alumnae of Harvard Equity Initiative (BAHEI) and Co-Chair of BAHEI’s DEI Playbook Committee.

Gilliam has lived in Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe, been to over 40 countries, and speaks French. She has also completed three marathons and three Olympic-distance triathlons to support cancer research, volunteers as an attorney for Election Protection, and successfully lobbied for changes to the U.S. tax code.

Gilliam is a Black woman whose family has been in the United States for nearly 400 years and fought in every American war, including the American Revolution and Civil War. She has also lived through military conflict, having been evacuated by the U.S. military when it invaded Grenada in the Caribbean.