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Vanessa Sheridan is a nationally recognized expert consultant, inclusion/awareness trainer, and speaker/presenter on transgender workplace issues. She is also the Director of Transgender Relations and Community Engagement for Chicago's Center on Halsted. Since 1991 Vanessa has helped organizations of all sizes enhance their cultural competence and improve effectiveness by providing professional transgender-related business services.
Vanessa helps client organizations develop transgender-inclusive employee policies, create effective guidelines and procedures, identify and implement best practices, and provide transgender awareness trainings for employee groups. Some of the organizations with which Vanessa has worked include:
Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Orlando, FL; Richmond, VA; San Diego, CA; Chapel Hill, NC)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Washington, D.C.)
Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (San Francisco, CA and Chicago, IL)
The Second City (Chicago, IL)
YMCA of Metro Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Iowa State Bar Association (Des Moines, IA)
McKinsey and Company (New York, N.Y.)
Ecolab (Naperville, Il.)
Aveda Corporation (Blaine, Minn.)
Best Buy (Minneapolis, Minn., headquarters)
HSBC North America (Chicago, Il., and Buffalo, N.Y., offices)
Zoro Tools (a division of W. W. Grainger, Mundelein, Il.)
Celera Corporation (San Francisco, Calif.)
Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.), Korn-Ferry/Global Novations, Inc. (Boston, MA)
Human Rights Campaign (Washington, D.C.)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis and Morris, Minn., campuses)
Multicultural Forum on Workplace Diversity (Minneapolis, Minn.) Conference Board USA Corporate Diversity and Inclusion Conference (Chicago, Ill.)
Mountain Area Health Education Center SouthEastern Health Summit (Asheville, N.C.).
Vanessa is the author of numerous articles for publications such as the Huffington Post, Diversity Business Magazine, Echelon Magazine, and Lavender Magazine. She has been selected by Metropolitan State University of St. Paul, Minn., as "One of 40 Alumni Who Are Making a Difference." Vanessa was quoted and identified as an expert on transgender workplace issues in HR Magazine and the Cincinnati Enquirer. She was the subject of a feature-length article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and she is featured prominently in Transitions, a traveling corporate diversity and inclusion educational initiative produced by the Stonewall National Museum and Archives.
Vanessa is also a former (and the first transgender) member of the Board of Directors for the Stonewall National Museum and Archives; a two-time national Lambda Literary Award finalist for her pioneering books on transgender spirituality topics; and listed and profiled as a "leader in religious movements for justice for LGBT persons" by the LGBT Religious Archives Network.
Vanessa is the author of the groundbreaking business book The Complete Guide to Transgender in the Workplace, the first hardcover, full-length volume on this leading-edge business topic ever released by a mainstream publisher.