Lori Nishiura Mackenzie is a speaker, researcher and change agent in creating inclusive organizations and curating effective teams. She is co-founder of the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab, which leads foundational research to advance the leadership of women, gender expansive, and gender non-conforming individuals and disseminates research-based solutions. In her work, Lori fosters a “small wins” approach to change by supporting people to take bold yet doable actions. Recently, Lori collaborated with the California Partners Project, a non-profit co-founded by California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, to create a Board Culture Playbook and a Board Recruiting Playbook found at inclusiveboards.stanford.edu to support boards to be more diverse, inclusive and effective.
Lori is a keynote speaker to a wide range of audiences, from executive teams to women’s summits. Lori’s expertise has been recognized as a 2022 LinkedIn Top Voice in Gender Equity, a BBC’s 100 Women in 2017, and in the award-winning documentary, bias, which premiered in 2018. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Inc., Fast Company and the Inc. In 2020, Lori was awarded the CEDAW Human Rights Award, Education, from the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women. Prior to her current roles at Stanford, Lori served as the executive director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Lori brings 20 years of marketing strategy and business management experience at companies including Procter & Gamble, Apple, eBay and PayPal. She is a board member of the Alliance for Girls and the Center for Institutional Courage, and an advisor to August and Optionality. Lori has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
*Pronounced see-daw for UN General Assembly, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 18 December 1979
