Carolynn Johnson has been named acting chief executive officer of SHRM Linkage, the leadership development arm of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), effective immediately. She will continue in her existing role as president of SHRM’s Center for Inclusion & Diversity.
Johnson brings more than two decades of executive leadership experience in business strategy, commercial growth and organizational transformation. Before joining SHRM, she served as CEO of Fair360, formerly known as DiversityInc, where she advised Fortune 500 chief executives, chief human resources officers and corporate boards on leadership strategy and business transformation.
In her expanded role, Johnson will oversee SHRM Linkage’s continued growth while working with SHRM’s executive leadership team to advance its leadership development mission.
“For 35 years, Linkage has been in the business of building the leaders organizations can’t do without and that work matters more now than ever,” said Syed Wasey, chief commercial officer at SHRM. “Backed by an extensive foundation of leadership data and a track record of developing leaders at scale, Linkage equips organizations to build the leaders they’ll need next, strengthening leadership pipelines, deepening organizational trust, and fueling the innovation and growth companies need to thrive in what’s ahead. We remain committed to building on that foundation, pushing it further, so Linkage remains the standard the rest of the industry measures itself against.”
SHRM Linkage has focused on leadership development for more than 35 years, offering executive coaching and immersive learning programs. Its work draws on a dataset of more than two million leadership data points collected from more than 100,000 leaders, according to SHRM Linkage.
Recent SHRM Linkage research points to a widening leadership readiness gap as artificial intelligence reshapes business operations and employee expectations continue to shift, according to the organization. Leaders whose decisions consistently align with organizational purpose are 88 times more likely to be rated among the most effective in their organizations, according to SHRM Linkage’s Purposeful Leadership Assessment.
The Linkage Leadership Institute will be featured at All Things Work, an SHRM conference running Nov. 16 to 18 in Nashville, Tennessee. It is one of three connected learning paths at the event, alongside Blueprint for Inclusion & Diversity and Skills Accelerator, combining leadership development with inclusion strategy and broader HR expertise.
