Linda Bates Parker

Linda Bates Parker is President and Founder of Black Career Women, Director of the Career Development Center and a distinguished teaching fellow at the University of Cincinnati. Linda is a nationally respected career coach and particularly adept in counseling and advising women on their career concerns.
 
Mrs. Parker's career includes work in both corporate and educational settings. Through her experiences of being "the first" in so many of her endeavors, Linda was prompted to create a support group for achieving and aspiring black women. With a small nucleus of other concerned and achieving women, Black Career Women (BCW) was founded. Today, 29 years later, Linda, through BCW has coached and inspired thousands of women - aspiring professionals, managers and executives in diverse fields across the U.S. - to strategically manage and advance in their careers.
 
Linda's coaching and advocacy has also helped a few black women even overcome the "concrete ceiling" to reach executive level positions in major corporations, despite their sparse numbers nationwide. Linda is regularly consulted to provide counsel to women in career transition seeking to make a career change, overcome career roadblocks particularly endemic to the careers of black women, and to realize greater career satisfaction.
 
With prior corporate positions at Procter & Gamble and Federated Department Stores, Linda is regularly invited to make presentations to professional associations and corporations on issues related to women's career development and workforce diversity. Through BCW, she assisted Catalyst, a New York based, national women's research organization to launch its benchmarking study, Women of Color in US Corporations. In September, BCW will host its 29th annual professional development seminar and in October, Linda will present at Fortune Brands INSIGHT Women's Leadership Conference in Chicago.
 
Linda is the creator of BCW's Can We Talk?TM national diversity forums, is the Campus Advisor for the national Black Collegian Magazine, and author of Career Portfolio, now in its 5th edition, a 21st century career and job search textbook for college students. Linda's stellar career includes numerous awards: Working Mother Magazine's National Diversity Champions Award 2000; the Enquirer's Woman of the Year; the YWCA Career Women of Achievement; United Way of Cincinnati's New Century Leadership Award and the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Global Citizen Award for her development of international career conferences, in Africa, South America and the Caribbean..
 
This past September, Linda was featured in the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Journal as a "thought leader" in her profession, where her reflections on a 20 plus year career in the field of career development was featured. Last year, Linda was inducted into the NACE Academy of Fellows, one of the highest distinctions extended to members of NACE nationally for her body of work and lifetime of professional accomplishments. Linda is one of only 15 Career Development Center Directors in the country to be inducted into the Academy, since its inception in 1994.
 
Linda completed her master's Degree from the University of Cincinnati. She is also a graduate of Leadership Cincinnati and Harvard University's Management Development Program.
 
For a preliminary consultation and rates, contact Linda at linda@bcw.org

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