Lisa Fain and Dr. Lois Zachary

Lisa Fain is the CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence and an expert in the intersection of cultural competency and mentoring. Her passion for diversity and inclusion fuels her firm conviction that leveraging differences creates a better workplace and drives better business results.

Lisa brings her energy, enthusiasm, and engagement to any group, facilitating lively workshops and training and delivering interactive speeches with practical steps that can be implemented right away.

Other Credentials. Lisa is a certified mediator through Chicago’s Center for Conflict Resolution and a certified life coach through the International Coach Academy. She graduated with a B.S. in Social Policy from Northwestern University and holds a Juris Doctorate from Northwestern University School of Law.

As Senior Director of the Diversity and Inclusion function at Outerwall, Inc., Lisa spearheaded its diversity initiative’s development, establishment, and implementation. Before assuming that position, she worked as Outerwall’s in-house counsel, coaching leaders and partnering with Human Resources to establish fair and effective policies and practices that would sustain the organization as it grew in size, revenue, and renown.

For almost a decade, Lisa practiced law in the Chicago office of a major multinational firm, where she counseled employers on creating inclusive policies and practices. While in that role, she served as Master Trainer, training thousands of employees at various companies, large and small, on how to create a better workplace.

Lisa lives in Seattle, WA. She loves to hike and explore the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters.

Dr. Lois Zachary is an internationally recognized expert on mentoring and the founder of Leadership Development Services, LLC, and its Center for Mentoring Excellence. She has been cited as “one of the top 100 minds in leadership” today. You’ve likely seen mention of Dr. Zachary’s books, or read her quotes, in The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Inc. magazine, T&D, Leadership Excellence, The Chronicle of Higher Education, or other business and leadership news outlets.

Lois J. Zachary earned her doctorate in adult and continuing education from Columbia University and earned master’s degrees from Columbia University and Southern Illinois University. She is the author of multiple books on mentoring. Her first book, The Mentor’s Guide (2000), has become a primary resource for organizations interested in promoting mentoring for leadership and learning and for mentors seeking to deepen their mentoring practice. With Creating a Mentoring Culture (2005), The Mentee’s Guide (2009), the second edition of The Mentor’s Guide (2012), Starting Strong (2014), Five Mentoring Excellence Pocket Toolkits, and hundreds of articles and blogs, Lois has created a comprehensive set of resources for promoting her lifetime passion: mentoring excellence for individuals and organizations.

Lois’s innovative mentoring approaches and her expertise in helping leaders and organizations design, implement and evaluate learner-centered mentoring programs have been used globally by a wide array of clients, including Fortune 100 companies, NGOs, government organizations, educational institutions, and numerous profit and nonprofit entities.

 Dr. Lois Zachary and her daughter Lisa Fain are a powerful entrepreneurial mentoring team. Dr. W. Brad Johnson, a Professor of Psychology at the U.S. Naval Academy and Faculty Associate at Johns Hopkins University, says of Dr. Zachary and Lisa, today’s Mentor Guests, are “luminaries in the mentoring field.” Order book HERE!