MEET THE AUTHOR

Emily Bland is a visionary global business executive and organizational leader with expertise in all Human Resource areas, including leadership coaching, performance management, talent strategy, change management and acceleration, discrimination and harassment allegation investigation, organizational design, leadership succession and outsourcing planning.

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She founded Franklin and Folger LLC, and serves as President and Principal Director, tapping into her expertise to offer coaching, consulting, strategic planning, discrimination and harassment allegation investigation and response planning, change management leadership and business solutions to grow and transform companies. She advises leaders and employees from all levels, C-suite to individual contributor, to achieve maximum performance.

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In a number of leadership roles with Comcast, Emily oversaw the National Customer Operations and Customer Experience, including having strategic responsibility for 17,000 internal Customer Care agents and operational responsibility for 3,500 employees, leaders and executives representing Billing, Sales, Repair and Retention queues and five product lines. Her titles included Vice President of Human Resources, National Customer Operations and Customer Experience; Vice President of Human Resources, National Engineering and Technical Operations; and Executive Director of Human Resources, National Engineering and Technical Operations. She grew FTE count by more than 200% within two years in the area of operational responsibility due to insourcing strategy and business growth. She opened three strategic, national call centers overseeing creation and implementation process, compensation, staffing and training, and created and implemented strategies to enhance a Customer Care employee experience that supported a positive customer experience. She regularly earned very high employee satisfaction survey scores throughout her tenure, a critical internal key performance indicator.

As Vice President of Human Resources for American Water Enterprises, Inc., which manages and operates water and wastewater facilities in the U.S., Emily provided HR leadership and management to national and regional commercial businesses operating in the U.S. and Canada. She participated in the development and administration of acquisition and divestiture planning and transitioning, and was a key deal team member on three stock sales, two asset sales and one company closure.

Upon the creation of DS2 (Defense Support Services), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin, Day & Zimmermann and Aerotek, Emily managed the start-up of the human resources function for 4,400 employees internationally, including those covered by a labor union, Service Contract Act or Davis-Bacon Act. She managed configuration and implementation of the SAP payroll system for employees at more than 75 domestic and international locations, and implemented diversity and harassment prevention training for all management and supervisory staff, in addition to benefits, compensation, talent acquisition and performance management leadership and function design.

Before this, she was Assistant Director of the Chancellor’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Access at the University of Illinois, providing overall recruiting and selection leadership to the entire campus, with a primary focus on faculty relations. She was appointed Grievance Officer to handle internal employee relations.

Earlier positions included Senior Human Resources Compliance Consultant and a Director of Human Resources at Day & Zimmermann, Inc., a privately held company in the fields of construction, engineering, staffing and defense solutions; and several leadership roles of increasing responsibility with Milliken & Company, a privately owned U.S. company providing specialty chemicals, floor coverings, specialty fabrics and performance products and solutions around the world.

Emily is certified in Prosci – Change Management and Affirmative Action Training through the National Conference for Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education. She is a member of the Institute of Coaching, Human Resources Executive Alliance of Philadelphia, the Tri-State Human Resource Management Association and the Society For Human Resource Management, among other industry groups.

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Emily holds a Master of Human Resource Development from Clemson University and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Ball State University. She has completed professional development programs, including Women in Leadership at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Design Thinking at Harvard University, and is a fellow at the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute. In addition to her work at Franklin and Folger, Emily recently completed her first novel, a mystery, and is working on a book detailing her leadership performance coaching model. She and her family enjoy hiking, sporting clays, reading, swimming and kayaking.