Lori Gentles joins me to discuss how she’s keeping a heart-centered approach during the crazy time. How do you balance a people-centered business and also fiduciary responsibilities? How do you approach work when your reputation is your capital? How do you take ownership of your life and your destiny? In this episode, Lori emphasizes the importance of making informed, intelligent, inspired, and intentional decisions in the workplace and in life.

Lori Gentles is the Chief People Officer for the City of Santa Monica, one of the nation’s most recognizable and diverse communities providing full service municipal services to residents, tourists and businesses.

As an entrepreneurial and transformative change-promoter, Lori has dedicated 20 plus years’ inspiring and leading strategic organization wide initiatives in various complex and diverse public sector agencies.

Over the years, Gentles has established a professional brand as a Cultural Architect specializing in designing, building and cultivating a culture that embraces employee empowerment and leverages individual and collective genius through creativity, diversity, equity and inclusion.

The program designer of Employeeship™, The Path to Leadership, Lori’s vision is to provide highly self motivated employees across the globe with the tools to become exceptional leaders and societal contributors by moving away from entitlement to empowerment.

Gentles, considered by many, an industry influencer, is known for employing a progressive approach to human resources. Her penchant for identifying ways to eliminate the ‘boundaries that bind’ and inspiring a new ‘portrait of possibilities’ has proven successful and catalytic.

In addition to her work in public sector organizations, Gentles has served in various participant and leadership roles on Boards and Commissions such as the Consortium for International Management, Policy and Development; Commission on Access, Diversity and Excellence; College and University Professional Association; National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education; National Black MBA Association.

A local and international speaker, Gentles has presented in Asia, Africa and the US on topics such as women empowerment, breaking the cycle of poverty through socially conscious international recruiting, education and employment, and leadership and performance management.