Marilyn Abney Email & Phone Number

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

As Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. She is a nationally recognized expert in helping organizations create inclusive cultures that leverage diversity and inclusion for a competitive advantage. Her superpower is developing strategies that enable their clients to attract, develop, and retain highly skilled talent from an emerging diverse workforce and, at the same time, enhance the engagement, knowledge, and skill of current employees.As the Chief Operating Officer for one of the top DEI firms in the country, Marilyn is responsible for business development, project management, and overseeing client needs fulfillment. She oversees the firm’s organizational assessments and workforce strategy advisory services.Marilyn is a successful business leader with experience working with global corporate clients across a wide range of markets and industries. She is a dynamic speaker with an engaging personality who has a genuine passion for helping business leaders achieve their goals.Her style is results-oriented, and she has the unique ability to tailor solutions to meet each client’s needs. Open, honest communications are at the heart of all her engagements. She uses a straightforward approach to help executives set realistic and achievable change management and growth initiatives. Icarus clients consider her a true partner in their success. Marilyn has earned a reputation for implementing visionary, long-lasting changes to create a healthier culture and improve an organization’s overall performance.

Fayetteville, Ga

Consult with clients in the areas of leadership development and talent management curriculum design, recruitment, executive presentation and facilitation skills, leadership development programs, new employee orientation, executive onboarding, succession planning, executive assessments, executive coaching, leadership competency identification and implementation, organizational strategies, processes, and tools. Perform learning management systems (LMS) needs analysis, product selection, project planning, functional implementation and upgrade lead. Enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) training strategies, system documentation, implementation and upgrade training, and project change management strategy. Conduct job analysis, training needs analysis, communications and change management strategy. Consult with individuals in the areas of executive coaching, career development coaching, executive presence, career transition, military career transition, and facilitation skills.

Birmingham, Alabama Area

Planned, developed, and administered career and employment assistance programs for students, graduates, and alumni. Built effective relationships with local and regional corporations such as non-profits, governmental agencies, and community partners to identify employment opportunities. Developed and implemented marketing plans to achieve graduate employment goals and manages quality surveys.Maintained presentation skills certification and oversaw training and development of the Career Services staff.Organized and set the Career Services Program plan annually Built and maintained relationships with local and regional corporations and organizations and developed and maintained systems used to identify employment opportunities for students. Assisted graduates in securing employment in their field of study by providing career coaching and interview techniques through one on one coaching, classroom seminars, and workshops. Oversaw maintenance of Career Services database and maintained department compliance with government and accreditation regulations. As a member of the campus leadership team was selected to serve on the Campus Advisory Committee.

Greater Atlanta Area

Reported to the Senior Vice President of Human Resources; a senior manager in the HR Talent Management organization supporting 26K enterprise employees in the Southern Company.  Led a team of seven highly effective talent management professionals and effectively maintained the budget at $1.1M due to organizational change during the economic downturn. Collaborated with executive leadership for all talent management efforts to include conducting needs assessments, interpreting evaluation results and determining their impact and making recommendations aimed at improving individual and organizational performance.  Aligned talent management goals and infrastructure in the areas of workforce, workplace, and marketplace across the organization and within each business unit. Established a pipeline of diverse talent by creating aggressive search strategies and facilitated executive diversity education as a part of the leadership development programs. Managed succession planning and employee performance management efforts. Transitioned both programs from tactical processes to strategic approaches by aligning organizational performance and competency requirements to business results; integrated both programs with learning and development, recruiting, and total rewards programs. Selected to lead a team of enterprise HR and IT professionals through the design and implementation of the first enterprise-wide New Employee Orientation (NEO) program. The program reduced support calls to the HR Service Center by 25%. Developed policies and procedures for engaging external coaches and vendors resulting in a more collaborative partnership. Developed a vendor orientation program that streamlined the contracting process and reduced the engagement cost across the enterprise by 25%.

Greater Atlanta Area

Reported to the Director of Talent Management. Led a team of five high-performing curriculum managers who were responsible for contributing to the development and overseeing the implementation, delivery, and systematic evaluation of assigned curricula (instructor-led, e-learning, webcast, e-books, etc.) supporting the training for 26K employees. Managed a budget in excess of $1.2M and oversaw an additional $4.5M annual tuition reimbursement program budget while making sometimes difficult disbursement decisions on behalf of the enterprise.  Provided thought leadership and strategic direction to the talent management, learning, and development functions. Served as chair of the Enterprise Learning Council that linked operating companies and business-unit-specific strategies into a centralized enterprise focus.  Led a cross-functional team of 27 training and IT professionals who completed a $350K upgrade of the enterprise’s Learning Management System LMS two months ahead of schedule and $127K under budget.  Conducted the LMS business needs analysis and collaborated with a cross-functional team of key stakeholders to identify best practices. Trained system administrators and employees on best practices and key functionality resulting in increased use of the system by an additional 30% and showed a significant improvement on the LMS ROI.  Designed and led the development of the training cost recovery database that was used to capture incremental costs of training. Obtained more competitive pricing from external consultants responsible for delivering training. The competitive pricing subsequently increased customer requests for training by 15% within the first six months.

Greater Atlanta Area

Facilitated talent review and succession planning discussions by partnering with a talent management consultant, HR business partners, business unit leaders, and C-suite executives to identify strategic business imperatives and align succession depth and organizational readiness plans to address those needs.  Developed the company’s first leadership development website to create greater transparency for the company’s leadership development process. This award-winning website was designed, developed, and completed 90 days ahead of schedule and $150K under budget by using internal resources.  Worked with Stephen Drotter (The Leadership Pipeline), Dave Ulrich (Human Resource Champions), Jay Conger (The Charismatic Leader) to customized curricula for enterprise leadership development training.  Managed the enterprise high potential education course partnering with Jay Conger from the London School of Business. Responsible for overseeing the curriculum, participant selection, action learning team project selection, and team report out presentations to The Southern Company Enterprise Development Council.  Managed the enterprise Leadership MBA program designed to identify external high potential MBA candidates to address succession bench strength issues. Responsible for program design, CEO program budget of $1Million, facilitation of the selection process, salary negotiations, candidate placement, and individual development planning and coaching of program participants. Successfully consulting with executive leadership across the enterprise operating companies and business unit matrix to implementation integrated talent management and succession planning strategies, models, processes, tools, and templates

Birmingham, Alabama Area

Manager, IT Training and DevelopmentPromoted by the CIO to lead the corporate IT training department for a customer-focused electrical supply company with 850+ salaried and hourly employees in 42 locations in the southeastern United States.  Implemented virtual training courses that streamlined the company’s ability to conduct training and deploy computer system modifications in a timely manner. Reduced the number of hours spent away from the job to train and reduced the company training travel costs by 50% by transitioning to virtual application Project Training Team Lead, ERP JDE OneWorld Implementation Team (1998 – 2000)Selected by the CIO to lead the project training team responsible for the rollout of system training, system documentation, change management initiatives, job analysis, training needs analysis and development of job aids.Led a team of five direct reports and 60 subject matter experts (SME) trainers as indirect reports as a part of a $17M JD Edwards OneWorld Enterprise Resource Planning System implementation. Completed the project ahead of schedule (prior to Y2K) and under budget.  Developed and executed the change management strategy. Conducted extensive performance analysis and consulted with the CEO and COO to achieve optimal business results. Increased operational efficiencies across all departments by successfully delivering the training to for automating distribution, financial, warehousing, and sales processes. Led the training team in support of the overall project by leading site volume testing and go live help desk support. The exposure during volume testing and help desk support allowed the team to identify and implement urgent follow-up training and job aids needed after go live.

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Occupational Education

Concentration: Corporate Training and Development

Associate Of Applied Science (A.A.S.), Instructional Methodology / Isd

– Concentration: Instructional System Design (ISD)

Education record

Results-Based Leadership