Amy Hilliard

Amy S. Hilliard is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, successful executive, board member, author, international speaker, and educator. Amy honed her leadership skills in consumer marketing, general management, strategy, branding, product development, retailing, capital raising, acquisitions, and global programming from experience with Fortune 500 corporations, legacy entrepreneurial companies, and her own businesses. A native of Detroit, she is an honors graduate of both Howard University and the Harvard Business School. The Hilliard Group, her strategic marketing consulting firm has worked with major corporations and non-profits nationally and globally to help them penetrate multicultural markets. In 2001, she founded The ComfortCake Company, makers of “Pound Cake so Good it feels like a Hug”, which gained national distribution with United Airlines, Walmart, a McDonald’s test market and Home Shopping Network among others using Amy’s own pound cake recipes. Amy now licenses ComfortCake’s intellectual property and Sugarless Sweetness®, a patent-pending sugar substitute.

Previously President of Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the global legacy cosmetics company focused on women of color, Amy also held executive positions with Bloomingdale’s, Gillette, Pillsbury, Burrell Communications, and L’Oréal/Soft Sheen. Her marketing innovations to build one of Gillette’s brands into a $100 million-dollar business were documented in a case study for the University of Virginia’s Darden Business School. Amy has lectured at Northwestern’s Kellogg Business School, Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business and other universities. She has also been an Associate Adjunct Professor of Strategy at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where she taught MBA’s from around the world a course based on her book, Pivot for Success.

A proven thought leader and international speaker, she is known as “The Reinvention Specialist” and is the author of Pivot for Success - Hone Your Vision, Shift Your Energy and Make Your Move, published by Wiley. It is supported by First Lady Michelle Obama, and is endorsed by Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook; Dr. Wayne Frederick, former President of Howard University; Tom Burrell, founder of Burrell Communications; Actor/Producer Debbie Allen and many more. Amy’s blog, and Life Coaching Business, Sizzling After 60 – Thriving at Every Stage of Your Life is popular among all ages.

Based in Chicago and passionate about her community and health/wellness, Amy is the proud mother of two young professionals. She served two terms as a Trustee of Howard University, thirteen years on PepsiCo’s Multi-cultural Advisory Board, and was the first African American elected to the board of the National Association of the Specialty Food Trade. Amy currently sits on the LeanIn.org Advisory Board and was personally recruited by Sheryl Sandberg.