Leaderology - Company of the Year – Business Services

Company: Leaderology, Santa Ana CA
Company Description: At Leaderology, we believe that everyone has the potential to be a leader. Everyone. Headquartered in Orange County, California, Leaderology is a female-owned, WBENC certified, leadership development firm providing sustainable learning solutions to global industries and Fortune 500 companies. We are on a critical mission to develop authentic leaders and equip them to fearlessly solve tomorrow’s business challenges.
Nomination Category: Company/Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year – Business Services – More Than 10 Employees

Nomination Title: Leaderology

As a female-owned leadership development firm and a double (2020) Stevie Award Winner, Leaderology is on a critical mission to spread fearless authenticity and make it thrive. It all starts with leadership. Leaderology was founded in 2019 by Marissa Waldman and Jillian Lappetito. With these two at the helm, we have incorporated psychological safety and fearless authenticity into everything we do: from our internal processes to our client-facing products, from our sales cycle to our feedback loops, from our marketing campaigns to our scholarship and internship initiative.

Forming the cornerstone of our leadership and learning philosophy, psychological safety enables us to build trusting and open relationships with our clients, which extends to them the opportunity to be vulnerable, dig deep, and realize their true potential.

In looking at past performance, we have exceeded all our year-over-year performance and key initiative goals, granting us the ability to expand our global reach and support the needs of Fortune 500 companies.

Outline the organization's achievements

• We’ve achieved fiscal growth year over year; and in 2021 we achieved our annual goal by Q3.
• 36% of our team is multi-ethnic, 80% women-operated, 90% of our team is under the age of 40, and 100% is women-owned. We bring the right talent to the room, regardless of any demographic variable.
• At the onset of the pandemic, we ensured employee salaries were protected for at least 12 months. We protected every job, had zero layoffs, and hired four new members.
• Leaderology has provided extended maternity cover for three executives and bridged the pay gap between salary and state to provide job and financial security for new parents. We partnered and waived the membership fee for HeyMama, a networking community for working moms.
• We’ve successfully launched our scholarship program – PRAXIS serving specifically our underrepresented students from underserved communities, this year we selected three interns who will be receiving a paid internship, a scholarship, and a five-session leadership development training program.
• We successfully launched a six-episode digital series that produced multiple results; a new form of obtaining digital leads was created, our footprint in the LA market expanded, and our newest sales representative developed a book of business quickly.
• We have increased our community engagement, our followers on LinkedIn specifically have almost quadrupled over the past year.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant.

-From the start, we have surpassed our annual revenue goals without any start-up loans or investor funding. We are proud to have been profitable within 30 days of opening our firm. According to the NAWBO, only “4.2% of all women-owned firms have revenues of 1 million or more”, yet Leaderology blew past that benchmark within the first 10 months of operation.

-Though the pandemic brought unpredictability, being fiscally responsible allowed Leaderology the ability to keep the best interests and well-being of our employees top of mind. This allowed us to guarantee that employee salaries were secured for the year and bring on four more full-time employees, while our competitors furloughed or laid off their staff down to a skeleton crew.

-We believe that leadership isn’t limited to one gender, age, or ethnicity. Receiving our WBENC certification was incredibly rigorous, and we are proud to be recognized as 100% female-owned. We are also preferred partners by diversity supplier programs because of our company demographics.

-In response to the pandemic, our competitors limited their discretionary spending. However, Leaderology doubled down on its marketing and community relations efforts. We launched digital campaigns, built a digital leads pipeline when in-person networking was not an option. Doubled our new customer % growth, invested, and launched a high-end product commercial, a digital series, and a complimentary Coaching on-Call. Our investment in these three areas allowed us to continue connecting with our community and reduce sales lead times.