The Azara GroupFatimah Gilliam, Esq.
Founder & CEO
Fatimah Gilliam, Esq. is the Founder and CEO of The Azara Group. As a skilled strategist, business leader, negotiator, and trusted advisor, she has spent her career advancing her clients’ goals. She leverages her expertise to provide real-world guidance. Her mission is to empower her clients to be strong business leaders, drive results, have successful careers, and be strategic in influencing others.
She is an author, lawyer, consultant, public speaker, and entrepreneur whose career combines expertise in the law, diversity, human capital, leadership, stakeholder engagement, and negotiations – helping organizations gain influence and strategic leverage, build coalitions and consensus, drive business and organizational goals, and advance workforce optimization.
Ms. Gilliam is the author of the groundbreaking book, Race Rules: What Your Black Friend Won’t Tell You, which is an innovative, practical manual of the unwritten “rules” relating to race helping people navigate polarizing issues. Race Rules provides much-needed how-to advice to drive equity and behavioral change. Introducing a straightforward, universal 3-step framework to unlearn racism, drive equity, and challenge misconceptions, it provides tips and tools on cross-racial interactions in people’s personal and professional lives.
Since launching her company, she has counseled institutional and Fortune 500 clients on being strategic in negotiations to expand leverage and bargaining power. She has also worked on strategy consulting projects, and has helped companies improve their diversity initiatives. Ms. Gilliam has helped private clients negotiate six-figure increases in compensation and severance packages, and has counseled business leaders on navigating their ascent up the corporate ladder through being more effective leaders and managers.
She has also spoken to groups of professionals, top executives, athletes, and students about how to position themselves for career success. Ms. Gilliam has counseled leaders in sports in negotiating more lucrative business deals and spoken to and advised athletes about leadership, career mobility, and life after sports.
As an expert negotiator, diversity disruptor, and strategist, she has been interviewed and written articles on negotiating, leadership development, the sports industry, being an influencer, career strategy, and the “art of persuasion.”
Her mission is to empower her clients to be strong leaders, have successful careers, and be strategic in influencing others.
- Alumna – Wellesley College; John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (concentration in Conflict Resolution and Negotiation); Columbia Law School (participating in the Mediation Clinic).
- Former Wall Street corporate attorney for world-renowned Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP – negotiated deals from the hundreds of millions of dollars to $1 billion.
- Former Director of Diversity Recruitment for Citigroup overseeing diversity recruiting strategy for all of Citi’s US businesses and recruiting operations for 30 training programs across the US.
- Former Head of Finance and Fundraising for North America for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning United Nations World Food Programme – negotiated partnership with The Hunger Games film franchise and rapper 50 Cent (providing roughly 20 million meals to children in famine-stricken Africa).
- Advised clients from Fortune 500 companies to sports industry leaders – including consulting on strategic initiatives, diversity strategies, and talent management for Fortune 500 companies on billion-dollar initiatives and business objectives.
- Counseled clients in negotiating six-figure increases in compensation and severance packages, and senior executives on strategic initiatives running billion-dollar businesses.
- Been interviewed on television (e.g. CNBC’s Power Lunch; CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip), by news outlets (e.g. CNN; Associated Press; Insider; Yahoo! Finance), and by industry publications (e.g. Society for Human Resource Management or SHRM).
- Board member of the Columbia Law School Association, and a board member and the Careers Committee Co-Chair of the New York Wellesley Alumnae Club.