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Meet Deb Elam Grant

Deb Elam Grant is a visionary senior executive and one of the country’s foremost experts in Leadership, Diversity & Inclusion. She is the President and CEO of Corporate Playbook™, a company that provides leaders with strategic direction to elevate diversity, inclusion, philanthropy, and culture in the workplace. In addition to Corporate Playbook™, Deb is also Executive Vice-Chairwoman of CNEXT, a highly-diverse global community for leadership exchange, development, and advancement of high-impact leaders. Deb helped to design CNEXT's Emerging Leaders Forum, which helps to develop women and people of color who are in the pipeline at the director/senior director level.

Deb was GE’s first-ever black female corporate officer. Her role as Global Chief Diversity Officer placed her in the top 185 of 300,000 employees. In Deb’s decorated thirty-year career at General Electric (GE), she led the company’s philanthropic efforts through the GE Foundation’s $130 million dollar budget and thousands of GE Volunteers, to tackle some of the world’s most critical challenges in health, education and skill attainment. 

Deb is a powerful connector who elevates those around her and has received numerous accolades, including 50 Most Powerful Women in Philanthropy from Inside Philanthropy, Women of Excellence Legacy Award from the National Association for Female Executives, Women of Power Award from the National Urban League, and the NCAA Legacy in Leadership Award, presented at the 2022 Final Four Championship Game.

Deb received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, from Louisiana State University and a Master of Public Administration, from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She has also been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. 

She serves as an independent director at DJE Holdings (Edelman) www.edelman.com and ShotSpotter SSTI (NASDAQ), where she chairs the compensation committee. She is also on the board of directors at the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute; the Louisiana State University (LSU) Foundation and was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE). Deb is also a member of the National Black MBA Association, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and The Links, Incorporated. Deb has two young adult daughters. She and her husband reside in New Orleans.