Karlene Toren

Karlene is a Certified Professional Diversity Coach, and a certified graduate of McKinsey’s Black Leadership Academy Management Accelerator Program. She also holds two degrees in Healthcare Administration and Technical Management majoring in Marketing & Business Resource Management from DeVry University.   

Karlene has worked in multiple industries including NGOs, Corporate America and Donor Agencies in various roles. In her current role, she supports senior leaders and participates in a talent share within the company’s Talent Management team as a Development Program Inclusive Diversity & Equity Employee Impact Group Coordinator. She also serves as chairperson for the Career Development arm of the company’s Employee Impact Groups.

Karlene coaches leaders and individuals in the areas of career and life transformation, training and development frameworks to increase inclusion and equity mindsets for retention of diverse talent within organizations, personal empowerment, and development of IDE (inclusion, diversity and equity) systems for leadership. She  incorporates coaching and facilitation to collaborate with clients to achieve their objectives and facilitate change. 

Her passion is to empower clients to embrace diverse voices at the table to drive better decisions and outcomes for everyone. As a coach, Karlene believes that diversity is an “invitation” to the dance. While Inclusion and Equity is being invited “to” dance. Thus, emphasizing  her role in partnership with leaders is to assist them to create the mindset systems to invite their diverse talents to both “the” dance and “to” dance.

Karlene’s experience and passion for producing  physiologically safe spaces for empowerment for clients is driven by her gratitude to those who previously created such spaces that allowed her to soar