Nikki R. Lanier

Nikki Lanier is an experienced leader with over 25 years of career achievements that span Banking, Labor and Employment Law, Collective Bargaining, Human Resources, and State Government. A Private and Public Sector CHRO adept in a multitude of HR disciplines, Lanier is experienced in managing multi-site operations, ensuring compliance with all federal and state employment laws and employing comprehensive approaches that effectively align human capital priorities with the overall organizational strategy. Lanier is a collaborative leader who is skilled in building synergetic teams in multi-cultural and cross-functional environments. An Executive Management Committee veteran with site and functional leadership responsibilities with the Federal Reserve Bank, Philip Morris USA, Georgia Pacific, ADP, Charter Schools USA and the country’s largest community college system, Maricopa Community Colleges, Lanier is a dexterous division executive having led teams in a number of settings including, manufacturing, government, higher education, HR consulting, healthcare, k-12 and central banking.

As CHRO of three organizations, Lanier drove accelerated cultural change, created and implemented innovative organizational development, strategic planning, employee relations, community engagements and partnerships, training and development, succession planning, recruitment and retention, labor negotiations and union avoidance, all directed toward driving strong operational outcomes. A consummate leader of leaders, Lanier has led HR departments with more than 200 HR practitioners serving employee populations as large as 33,000 and; pulling from her critical, abstract and liner thinking styles, has managed broad and trajectory “resetting” HR departmental transformations.

Lanier is deeply involved in the community and has served on more than 25 nonprofit boards, commissions and civic committees. Through her work and strong local and national board memberships, she is widely recognized as an accomplished thought leader and compelling keynote and plenary speaker on topics related to in progressive HR strategies, transformational leadership, organizational effectiveness, community and economic development, economic education and advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism, corporately and civically.

Lanier earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Miami School of Law, a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Hampton University and holds a certification in Collective Bargaining from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She has served as an adjunct MBA professor for the University of Louisville College of Business where she also serves on its Board of Advisors.