Julie Gilbert

Founder and CEO, WOLF Means Business

BIG IDEAS

• The Fuel to Power Performance: Leadership, Diversity, and Innovation
  Julie Gilbert's capacity to tap employees’ passions to drive innovation and value has earned her a reputation as one of the fastest-rising leaders in corporate America. At Best Buy, Inc., she lead retail training, leadership development, and the company’s innovation engine for the more than 140,000 Best Buy employees internationally. She also created and lead the Winning With Women strategy for the company, which is powered by WOLF (Women’s Leadership Forum). Under her leadership, Best Buy achieved significant business outcomes in employee recruiting, retention, and customer market share. In this presentation, Julie shares the strategies she and her team utilized to mine new growth markets, identify unmet customer needs, and create value by leveraging diversity of thought inside and outside of Best Buy.

SNAPSHOT BIO

A proven entrepreneur, Julie Gilbert has spent her career building industry-changing businesses.  She is the founder and CEO of WOLF Means Business, a consulting firm that helps clients grow customer marketshare through a visionary expansion process—WOLF—that Julie created and scaled while working as a senior vice president at Best Buy. Julie built WOLF more than five years ago to engage Best Buy employees, consumers, and partners as part of the organization's broad innovation and reinvention initiatives. Today, through WOLF Means Business, Julie implements the WOLF model within companies in all industries to help executives achieve sizable revenue growth.

Through WOLF, Best Buy grew female revenue by more than $4.4 billion in less than five years. WOLF also helped Best Buy reduce female employee turnover by more than 5% each year and increase the number of women at all levels of the company by more than 18%.

Before launching WOLF Means Business, Julie spent more than 16 years building new capabilities and revenue streams for her employers. In a retail role at Best Buy, she led the enormously successful Magnolia Home Theatre and U.S. Virgin Mobile launches.  Previously, Julie spent eight years at Deloitte & Touche, where she developed new businesses within the organization.  
A motivational speaker and teacher, Julie has presented to more than 100,000 people internationally. Her areas of expertise include creating innovation networks, reinventing business models to achieve growth, customer and employee engagement, authentic leadership, and female and ethnic minority business leadership. She has consulted with many Fortune 100 companies around these topics and others. Her offices are located in New York City and Minneapolis.

She has been profiled in the Harvard Business Review, Business Week, ABC News, USA Today, Global Pulse, among other media outlets. Additionally, she has taught classes at the IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, New York University, and University of Minnesota Carlson School of Business.

The White House Project honored Julie with the EPIC “Circle of 10 Award” and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal named her one of Minnesota’s Women to Watch. She was recently named one of the Top 15 Women in Business by PINK magazine. Julie authors a monthly blog for PINK magazine and the Harvard Business School. She serves on the boards of the Women's Leadership Board at Harvard's Kennedy School and the White House Project.
 
Julie has a Masters in Business in strategy and marketing and an undergraduate degree in accounting, both from the University of Minnesota. She is a certified public accountant in the state of MN.  She is has a passion for fitness, dancing, and her family, and she resides in New York City.

A Closer Look at Julie

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Julie's current research agenda?

Julie helps create significant organic innovation and business growth by: 

• re-inventing business culture and business rhythms to enable the voices that are not heard to innovate by linking their passions to business objectives and customer growth (this involves including employees at the lowest levels, as well as customers)
• leveraging diversity as a core strategic tenet, not merely as a “nice to do” initiative
• tapping employees’ unique talents and experiences to drive cultural change and organizational transformation
• serving the booming female markets in an authentic, sustainable way 
• aligning leadership development initiatives with efforts to innovate new businesses

Julie considers giving back to communities to be an important, strategic part of business.  She aims to inspire and link women across the globe, providing them with the business-building and leadership skills they need to transform themselves and their environments for the better

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Julie's expertise, and what's ahead on her schedule?

Julie is a passionate change agent with proven business credibility.  She helps transform organizations and cultures through creative organic business growth, leadership development, and networks of voices that fuel innovation and real change.

Organizations are interested in the unique ways that she has embedded the gender component into business goals and outcomes.  An inspirational presenter, Julie shares how she helps others develop life skills, tie their passions to their work, and create new business opportunities through networks.  

Julie has presented at The Masters Forum, the Forbes Conference, the American Marketing Association,  the Ross Leadership Initiative-Foundation Session, the Minnesota High-Tech Association Annual Conference, the Heartland Institute Conference, the Girls Scouts Annual Event, the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show, the 15th Annual Society of Consulting Psychology, Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, and many others. 

Upcoming engagements include the 2008 National Human Capital Summit, the Institute of Management Accountants 88th Annual Conference & Exposition and the National Girls Scouts Conference.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Julie's thinking and inspires her work?

Julie is influenced the most by people that do not have official power, whose voices are not heard.  These groups include primarily those with backgrounds and experiences not typically heard in the board room (aka the company's customer growth).  She is most drawn to people who are somehow not in the social traditional norms of culture.  These people influence Julie because of their ability to accomplish amazing things against all odds, right down to basic human survival and because they comprise the majority of employees and customers any company could look to for organic growth.  These individuals also tend to have the most passion and courage, and they are the often the most creative and self-sufficient. They will reinvent future companies and the sustainability of the world.

Julie is also significantly influenced by historical change agents such as Catherine the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Gandhi, Jesus, and Susan B. Anthony.

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Julie's must-read list?

The Great Bridge, by David McCullough, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge; Mavericks at Work, by William C. Taylor and Polly G. Labarre; Tripping the Prom Queen, Susan Shapiro Barash; Vanity Fair

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Julie tap into to feed her mind and fuel her creativity?

Julie gleans insight and information by observing human behavior on a daily basis in myriad situations and settings.  She looks specifically for common human behavior in difficult situations, as those ignite the largest business growth possibilities and promise for broad change.   She says, “I also try to throw myself into unfamiliar cultural situations and many times travel alone to ensure I am ‘in it’ with the local people.” The solo trips put her in unfamiliar situations and force her to understand what’s happening around her.  "People and their behavior fascinate me in all social classes, groups, and unique settings. It is through real life that I see opportunities for business and sustainable positive change for all."

OUTREACH
What are Julie's pressing questions, and on which topics does she seek your feedback?

• What is the unachieved growth potential for organizations if they had all voices at the table representing their customer bases?  
• If leaders in positions of power truly were rewarded financially and otherwise for empowering all voices (employees and customers), WHO would be in the seats of the board room and WHAT would the discussions be vs. what they are today?
• What is the financial metric on the books when a company truly has employees and customers emotionally and passionately engaged in ways that align with their talents and skills?  
• How different would the world conflict situation be if there was an equal representation of women in positions of power given their unique perspectives and bridge-building skills?
• How dramatically could women change the world if they connected with other women—and men—from the world over to build confidence and leadership skills, and set them up with new businesses?