Jacquelyn B. Gates
Jacquelyn B. Gates is President and CEO of SOARing, LLC, which delivers consultative services to support organizations with strategic development initiatives. Her clients include the International Finance Corporation and the Asia Learning Group of the World Bank Group, Kaiser Permanente, the Cannon School, and Nationwide Financial Services. Gates is also a Vice President/Senior Consultant with Senn Delaney Leadership Consulting Group For the past 2 years Gates also served Oakwood College as its Vice President for Advancement and Development.
Gates is the former Ethics Officer for the World Bank Group where she reported to the Office of the President and provided leadership direction in communicating the mission and values in upholding the ethical framework of the organization’s Washington, DC headquarters and 140 world wide offices. Prior to the World Bank Group, Gates was a corporate officer for Duke Energy and served as Vice President of Diversity, Ethics and Compliance.
She also served as a corporate officer reporting to the Chairman of Bell Atlantic/Verizon and led various ethics, diversity and corporate culture initiatives from 1990 to 2000. Under Gates’ leadership, Bell Atlantic received numerous awards and recognition for its work in the areas of ethics and diversity. Bell Atlantic was a 1999 recipient of the American Business Ethics Award and received the highest grade on the 1999 NAACP Annual Telecommunications Industry Report Card. Bell Atlantic was recognized by Working Mother magazine as one of the 100 best companies for working mothers, named as one of the “Top 50” companies for Asians, Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans by Fortune Magazine and named to Latina Style magazine’s “Top 50” for professional Hispanic women. Bell Atlantic was also named as one of “America’s Top 15” companies for women-owned businesses by the Women’s Enterprise Business National Council and was recognized as a “Promising Practice” company by the President’s Initiative on Race for its work with employee resource groups. She has also held strategic management positions at Time Warner, PepsiCo, Revlon and JC Penney.
Gates is an emeritus board member of the Ethics Officer Association. Gates is on the Advisory Boards of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College, the National Association of Black Telecommunications Professionals and the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs Inc - - of which she is one of its former national presidents. Gates is a member of Junior Achievement’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Ethics and a visiting professor with the National Urban League’s Black Executive Exchange Program.
Gates has been cited by Ebony Magazine as one of America’s 100 Most Influential Blacks, by Ebony Man as a Woman of Distinction, by Dollars and Sense Magazine as one of America’s top black business and professional women and by Good Housekeeping Magazine as one of 100 Young Women of Promise. She is also listed in Who’s Who Among Black Americans. In 2002, she was named a Woman of Power and Grace by Frasernet. Gates was inducted into the 2004 Women’s Hall of Fame at the New Museum of the South in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, Gates received her bachelor’s degree in History from Brooklyn College and continued her graduate education at the New School University in New York City and is a master’s candidate at Trinity Seminary.
Gates is the mother of three children, grandmother of seven, and lives in Huntsville, Alabama. She is a well known speaker on ethics and values leadership, women, education and youth issues.