Listen to the podcast

What do Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers really want from work, and how can leaders navigate a multi-generational workforce without falling into stereotypes?

In this episode of Career Sessions, Career Lessons, JR Lowry sits down with Dr. Candace Steele Flippin to explore generational differences in the workplace, evolving leadership expectations, and how employees can future-proof their careers in an era shaped by technology, layoffs, and social change.

Dr. Flippin unpacks how value systems are shaped by world events, why compensation transparency matters more than ever, and how purpose has become central to career decisions post-COVID.

You’ll learn:

• How generational theory shapes workplace expectations
• Why Gen Z and Millennials prioritize purpose, empathy, and fair pay
• The leadership skills that cut across generations: active listening, collaboration, and empathy
• How the social contract between employers and employees has changed
• The rise of the gig economy and career self-management
• Why pay transparency is reshaping employee expectations
• How to avoid generational stereotyping at work
• The 5-step SHAPE framework from Dr. Flippin’s book Get Your Career in Shape

If you want to manage your career more proactively, this conversation is for you.

Subscribe for more conversations on career growth, leadership development, and navigating today’s workplace.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/dr-candace-steele-flippin/.

—

Watch the episode

Transcript

I’m J.R. Lowry. This is Career Sessions, Career Lessons, which is brought to you by PathWise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career like thousands of others already have, join the PathWise community. My guest is Dr. Candice Steele Flippin and we’re going to be discussing her research on our multi-generational workforce particularly its newer entrance Millennials and Gen Z. We’re also going to be discussing her book, Get Your Career in SHAPE. I’m sure there will be lots to talk about so let’s dive in.

—

Candace, welcome. Thank you for being on the show with me.

Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Before we dive into some of the other topics that I highlighted in the introduction. Give us a quick background on you.

I am someone who likes to connect people throughout their career journey no matter your career state. Whether you’re beginning like a Gen Z or you’re on your way as a millennial or you’re in the new OG in the workplace doing X or if you’re getting ready to go to the next stage as a Baby Boomer. I believe that everyone has something to offer and I like to help people win in their lives and their careers.

I know you’ve done a lot of research on the different generations in the workforce. How would you summarize some of the key career and workplace related differences? Particularly for Gen Z and Millennials who are newer in the workforce.

Let me ground you. Generational theory just says when and where you were born and what was happening when you were coming of age, shaped was important to you and your value systems. What we’ve seen over the past several decades is that technology and a lot of world events have shifted the priorities of Millennial and Gen Z workers. Some people call those shifts gaps. It has cause people sometimes to feel as though there’s a disconnect and value systems. I believe that there’s an enhancement in the value systems. It will take time to understand them then you can have a much more productive working environment.

Certainly, this idea that you’ve got multiple generations in the workforce isn’t a new thing. The thing that’s different now is you’ve got a broader age range in the workforce. You’ve got people who could be eighteen and people who could be up and well into their 70s, because people are living longer and are working longer.

That’s a real difference relative to what it might have been like 20 or 30 years ago where I’ll say it was relatively rare to have somebody over the age of 65 in the workforce. People viewed that as like art stop retiring. That’s not true anymore. To your point, you’ve got these things, whether it’s technology or world events. It could be geopolitical. COVID has had a big effect on Gen Z as they are coming into the workforce. All these things shape your psyche. They shape how you view lots of things and not just work.

How Value Systems And Leadership Styles Have Evolved

Where I would like to start is how value systems have changed and leadership has evolved like theories and concepts on what makes a great leader or high-performing team. It has changed. I’m Gen X and I often talk about Gen X because I often say we’re the Jan Brady of the generational discussion. Everyone else is getting a lot of attention except for Gen X but we exist. We do stuff. The traditional is and the greatest generation silent and the Baby Boomers, they have a very different approach to leadership.

It was very much commanded and controlled or, “Do as I say.” There wasn’t a lot of questioning. Part of that was because of that expectation when you retire at 65, or you get your go watch and you’re defined benefit pension or something like that. People saw that long horizon ahead. They were the company men or women or whatever the case may be.

There wasn’t a lot of push back. You’re only using your voice. Some you see like the labor movement. For the most part, people came and did what they were told. We started to see more shelves with the Gen X but we were groomed by the Baby Boomers that do that. With lifestyle, the accumulation of wealth and things like that, we wanted more. You get these Millennial and Gen Z, because of social media, they are using their voice more as customers and certainly as employees. Now, you have this other generation who are like full stop like, “What is this?”

On the far end now with Gen Z, if they don’t like something, they’ll just rally and walk out in mass and break up their own employer. The other part of it is this whole concept of loyalty which some people question. I don’t believe that people aren’t loyal to their employer. They want to work and have a great career.

However, the same social contract which allows you to walk into your employer and then still have that same employer 30 years from now, is less commonplace for a lot of people. They don’t expect it as much or in the same way. Even from institutions like government workers, whether it’s federal or State or Municipal or in Academia. Those bastions people thought like safe havens for career longevity to nonprofit or certainly private companies. That’s different now.

I’m on the upper end of Gen X. I think things started to change in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when this concept of layoffs started. That’s where the social contract as it existed for some period of time before that of going to work for a company and staying until you retired and getting the gold watch. That’s where it started to change.

Our generation watched that happen as we were coming of age and becoming adults. It shaped our view, but we weren’t completely sure what to make of it because it was a little bit of a new thing. We had the ‘90s, which was like a great economic boom in the US. You didn’t necessarily have to worry so much about things like that. With this point, the social contract as it existed back in the day is gone.

There are lots to unpack there. Here’s what’s great and I believe that in many HR programs, it will say, “You should own and manage your own career.” We’re seeing people do that and that’s a good thing. We’re also seeing some shifts. You mentioned the layoffs that we saw. Some people call it the right side. All of these things are consolidating as companies start merging or at least broad acquisitions are happening. What people have not done to respond to that is we’ve seen this rise of this gig economy and 40% of people particularly those under 35 have some side gig. Their employer is not their primary source or their only source of income. They plan their lives that way.

We’re seeing that. Even Gen Xers are doing that. That’s becoming more commonplace. There’s this balance that people have. The other thing that I see happening and people talk about is you’re going into a role looking at your career from life of what’s in it for you as opposed to being there and what’s in it for the company. It’s the shift in terms of where you prioritize loyalty. It’s more for you. I don’t think that’s a bad thing because two things can be true. You can think about your own needs and you want to have a healthy company.

Multi-Generational Workforce: Most professionals these days get into a role thinking about what they will get from it instead of what they can give to the company.

What I find interesting about all of this is that it’s going to continue to evolve. That’s where a lot of my research starts. If we know that technology is making things so much better for all of us but at the same time, it’s creating these gaps for people. Is there anything you can do about this proactive? That’s where I like to start. No matter if you’re starting your career and you’re thinking about the longevity of your career. What’s happening in your industries that you can stay on top of if that shift happens. If your mid-career like most Millennials is, or you see it end in sight like a lot of Gen X’s are seeing.

How do you create opportunities for you to define what your in-state or your pivot looks like? If you are a Baby Boomer and you’re enjoying what you’re doing. You don’t want to check a box of 65. You want to continue. How do you future-proof your career so that ageism doesn’t impact your career mobility? I start with things that are in your control regardless of your generation so that you can have a growth mindset and open learning mentality about wherever you are. That’s what I’m excited about because change is going to happen whether we like it or not. The question becomes, how are you preparing yourself to navigate that change?

As you say there’s so much going on that’s changing technology geopolitically, economically, and societally. You can’t necessarily depend on the status quo being there forever, which means almost irrespective. This is what you’re saying, Candace. It’s irrespective of what generation you’re in. Future proofing is relevant for people of all of those generations.

Honoring Generational Differences Without Going Too Far

Talk a little bit about it in the workplace rather than from the focus of the perspective of the individual. When you get into one of these jobs or into any workplace, where you’ve got people from different generations, the danger is that you stereotype. Not every Gen X is the same. Not every Millennial is the same. Not every Gen Z is the same. How do you honor these generational differences without necessarily going too far and just stereotyping?

There’s going to be a bell curve. Their life experiences are shared. There’s this group of us who have common values but then there’s going to be people on the tail end that outliers because of whatever reason they’re different. What I would suggest is you want to meet people where they are. You don’t want to walk in and say, “We have a group of X and therefore, you will operate this way.” What my research suggests is that because of these value systems, how do they play out in a workplace?

One of the places I started doing my research is in communications. I’ve spent over 25 years in my career leading communications and corporate marketing and from a consumer side, but particularly a workplace. I wanted to understand for leaders how you work across these generations to have great performance in communication. I wanted to see which ones resonated. I was thinking there would be one for each generation. It turns out there’s three.

The first is active listening. If someone’s talking to you, you’re doing all the things and behaviors that demonstrate that you are listening or you’re paying attention. You’re having eye contact. You can paraphrase easily what you’ve just heard. You’re not picking up a device or staring at it and multitasking in the midst of a conversation. Baby Boomers resonate with that. If you think about workplace styles or how they came into the workplace, it makes sense. I often say, from a workplace context, if you want to get great productivity and enhance your leadership, focus on active listening.

For Gen X, it’s around collaboration and all the things you do at least small teams. That’s the agenda for the meeting. It’s making sure everyone’s voice is heard, the recognition, the feedback loops that go into place and rewards from all the things that make collaboration work. A great interpersonal skill is around collaboration. What was interesting for Millennial and Gen Z was it’s the same and that was empathy. Respecting another person’s point of view or perspective as valid even if yours is different.

Some people like to say, “Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, I find that difficult.” It’s around respecting that person’s perspective that is valid for them even if you have a different point of view. From workplace contacts, I trained coaches and leaders to focus on great listening skills, good collaboration skills and this newer management imperative in leadership, empathy.

There’s a lot of great work that Brené Brown talks about empathy. Those are three four workplace contacts that I think have been through a lot. You don’t have to come in and say, “This is a Baby Boomer. I’m going to actively listen. Here’s Gen Z.” If you work on those three, it will cut through a lot and set you up for a great environment from a workplace contact.

It sounds like it simplifies what could otherwise be complicated and fraught with stereotyping risk. What you’re saying is you cover those three, you’ve covered whatever percent of what will be important to multiple generations. You’re covering the bases well enough to make sure that you don’t leave anybody out but also don’t overly stereotype.

You don’t have to do the mental gymnastics of like, “I’m looking at JR. Is he a Millennial or a Gen X?”

I’m clearly not a Millennial, Candace.

You cut through it. As adults, we spend 70% of our working hours and some form of communication in writing, listening, reading and speaking. I like to simplify it and make it practical. If you focus on those then you don’t have to get so caught up and create a bias for yourself from a generational perspective.

The Most Important Things To Have In Your Career

You distilled down these different interactions or approaches into three that cut across it. Are there other things that you looked at in your research in terms of how people view work itself that are different or how they choose to complete their work in the course of a day? What are some of the other areas of research you’ve looked at across the different generations?

I’ve probably researched maybe close to 30,000 people in dozens of studies. At the beginning, I was looking at work-life balance. If you think back about a decade ago, a lot of employers are looking at flexibility. They want to get talent. Millennials in the workplace thought that what it was was work-life balance. If we had programs and benefits, that would be good talent strategies. I went into the lab multiple times to try to understand what it is.

I did a number of studies asking people and these were interviews. What’s important to you from a career perspective? From that, I developed this list of six topics, everything from getting promoted, making more money, work-life balance, changing careers, performance and then sunsetting your career. What was interesting time and time again, the top three were making more money, doing well and my current role, then work-life balance.

Across the board work-life balance was always in the number three position. Depending on the generation group or the gender, it was either compensation or performance. That’s always in the top two, but work-life balance. From there, I started looking at that. When I would have interviews with Millennial and Gen Z, out this whole concept of work-life balance, particularly the ones who said that they were ambitious. They didn’t mind putting in the hours. This is like from the year 2026 up until 2020. They didn’t mind putting in the time because they would say things like, “I have to pay my dues.”

Multi-Generational Workforce: We spend 70% of our working hours in some form of communication.

What they wanted was fair compensation, which was why it was so interesting to me in 2021 and 2022. Everyone was like, “All these Millennials want to get paid more money.” It has always been there. The other part was performance like doing well, professional development and feedback. My effort is aligned in the right place. That’s where I’ve focused for a long time. During 2020, in the start of April, I started looking at the effects that COVID was having worldwide on employee populations. Mainly in the US, North America, Canada, and in Europe.

What was interesting to me was that we started to see a lot more intrinsic, internal priority shifting. By and large, particularly for Gen Z and Millennial, a lot of mental health tolls and isolation are being sent home. The economic impact for those who were impacted, either themselves or their families because of the pandemic. I started to see a priority shift. The question that I was asking is based on the current economic conditions like the pandemic. We then had the whole social justice issues, things that cropped up, where you are with your career and what’s important to you.

A lot of people started to reprioritize what was important to them in their career and they wanted purpose. It wasn’t, “Today, I’m a lawyer. Tomorrow, I’m going to be a community worker.” It was, “I need to know that the place that I’m working contributes somehow to the greater good. Making the world a better place.” You still had people wanting to get career development and compensation. Now we’re looking at my purpose, my reason for working, and am I contributing to the greater good. That theme has persisted even to this day.

Coming back to the compensation and the performance piece. Is it about the money? Is it about, “I matter and I’m getting paid because I matter. I matter and I’m getting told my performance is good. I matter because I can see the purpose that I’m contributing to the world?”

There’s so much more transparency now about what people are paid. It becomes an equity issue. If I know via Google search looking at Indeed or looking at people who consolidate the Bureau of Labor Statistics on salary and compensation, Salary.com and LinkedIn. It’s out in the open in some places where they publish a salary range. For example, when I first started working. I had no idea what other people were making. There was limited information except for maybe I found out. Now that pay transparency is there.

You now have a worker who’s saying, “I know that these jobs pay X,” and they want pay parity. They want to feel that if they matter then their compensation is going to align with that contribution. I believe that they’re two separate issues. There’s wanting to have respect in the workplace and recognition as you as an individual. Also knowing that your contributions are fairly compensated.

I certainly have said to a few of my own bosses over the years when we’ve talked about compensation. I said, “I want to feel like I’m being paid fairly relative to my contributions and relative to what everybody else is earning.” I tell a story occasionally about being handed an end of your compensation statement. Getting a taxi cab, going to the airport, pulling the thing out and realizing that not only was my compensation statement in there but so was the compensation statement of one of my peers whose bonus was three times mine. I was like, “There’s something completely wrong here.”

It changed my relationship with my boss because at that point I didn’t feel like there was equity in the way that he was thinking about compensation across the team. To your point, those kinds of comparative exercises are a lot more common. Mine was accidental. When companies said, “You are not allowed to talk about your pay,” we believe them. Now, people understand that legally a company has no grounds to stop you from talking about your pay. They just don’t like it when you do.

Expectations are different. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. No one wants to come to work and feel underappreciated or have the trust broken. You can’t bring your whole self and you’re reluctant to give what we call discretionary effort like going that extra mile if you don’t believe that there’s going to be a reward at the end before you.

The Right Way To Navigate A Multi-Generational Workforce

As a way of wrapping up the conversation about the multi-generational workforce. What couple pieces of advice would you give to people irrespective of what generation they’re in about how to navigate multi-generational dynamics in the workforce?

The first thing I will say is appreciate the fact that things that were happening when people were coming of age influences how they think about a lot of things. It helps form their value system. They take that value system with them when they’re working. Be curious. If you want to avoid bias and those sorts of things, which you should. You can still respect their generational identity by focusing on your active listening, collaboration and empathy skills to start.

The other thing is around perspective. This narrative that I hear around people being maybe different generations or values systems, huge people thinking maybe they’re lazy or they’re not ambitious. There are a number of pivotal things that happen that shape that. Most recently COVID and environmental factors. People saw family members, friends, community leaders and celebrities die. It gets you to think about mortality and what’s important.

It’s not that maybe they don’t love working for your company or what they’re doing, but they are evaluating this within the grand scheme of life. I like to talk to people about these artifacts. One that most people can relate to was play. When I was coming up, it was starting to end. If I lost it to a softball game or whatever we were playing mainly outside. We lost and that was it. You have to go again and start again. I’m ready to play the whole season to be a winner. The way even my generation has it is like a video game. I think it was one like a pong thing.

The reward system we play now is different from gaming. There’s the concept of having to do something over and over again to demonstrate mastery. Sometimes, it’s lost on these younger generations because they’ve done it. They get the reward and go to the next level. If you have that expectation, I will prove I can do it. Why do I have to keep proving it over and over again to get a promotion? I feel like that concept of a temporal expectation around advancement trips people up on both sides.

Communication helps by setting the expectation of what that looks like. It’s so important. Most people look at it as a shortcut. It’s just what your expectation is around what mastery means. The easiest way to do that is to plant the seed of what the expectations are for advancement as opposed to the black box that we grow up with.

Five Things To Increase Your Self-Efficacy

Let’s talk about your book Get Your Career in SHAPE and the five-step framework that forms the basis of your acronym which is save, hard work, advocate, persevere and educate. How did you arrive at that list of five?

It started with a TEDX Talk that I did. Some of my mentees came to me and they said, “You’re always talking to us about our careers. TEDX Memphis is coming. You should give a talk about women in our careers.” What I was looking at was people who break through despite the odds because I’d do anything about bias or isms. I was curious. Are there things that you can do yourself that puts you in a position to manage your career better despite the odds? I looked at the concept of self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is your belief that if you do something that’s going to work out. If you perform a task, there’s something in you that makes you feel like, “It’s going to work out.” You’re going to try. It’s different from confidence. Confidence is your belief in yourself. I like to say your confidence will get you to the door but it’s your level of self-efficacy that determines whether or not you walk through the door. I did studies to look at what things that people can do themselves to help increase their self-efficacy and their ability to bet on themselves.

It turns out there are five things. The first is save. That’s about having a strong financial foundation. A lot of people don’t realize that your financial acumen or your financial health plays a role in whether or not you will bet on yourself and your career. Whether you’re ready to take a next role or you’ll take a chance on something new because your finances either are/or not in order. The first is, having a strong financial foundation.

The second one is what I call hard work. It’s not working hard because no one’s going to tell you not to work hard. It’s about that alignment. In the studies, women kept being tripped up over the fact that they were working hard. They were grinding and hustling, but at the end of the year, they’re performance evaluation didn’t match what they thought. It’s around being aligned with those who evaluate you.

The third is about using your voice effectively and I call it advocate. In the qualitative studies, it ranked high. In the quantitative studies, it was the most highly correlated to career self-efficacy. Being able to negotiate well in workplace contacts, for time, resources, compensation and knowing how to use your voice effectively.

The fourth is what I call persevere. That’s about two things having good coping mechanisms because they’re always going to be times in our careers or in our jobs where things are going to be tough. The key is how to navigate them well. Having good coping mechanisms and understanding the cues when you’re stressed is starting to get the best of you.

Finally, the last one is E which is educated. That’s about self-awareness and being a lifelong learner. It’s looking for ways that you can learn about your challenges or blind spots so that you can make decisions and take steps to overcome them and keep learning new things. It doesn’t matter what it is. If something new comes to you instead of your brain sending a signal like, “Danger. This might not be good. Change is bad.” You’re always learning new things. If a new opportunity comes my way, I’m always learning things. Instead of me putting up like a mental barrier, it’s like, “I learned this this and this. I can surely learn that.” Those five things can set you up to put you in shape to have a career you need, want and deserve.

The point you brought up about the amount of money that advocating is worth to you over the course of your career. You talked about the fact that having financial acumen gives you career choice, I would argue that having career ownership gives you financial freedom. There’s a little bit of back and forth that exists there. It amazes me how many people are passive about their careers. They will simultaneously say, “I wish I had more money.” It’s like, “You want more money? Manage your career more actively.” It’s simple. Not as simple as I just made it, but certainly there is a correlation there.

Amen. A lot of us don’t plan our careers. We’ve planned serially like the next job but not stepping back and looking at the whole architecture of your career journey and not encouraging a lot of times. You’re not encouraged to look beyond the next role and to think about having a tapestry to your career. People aren’t trained on how to do it. Even though HR will say, “Your career progression is for you to own.” A lot of times, managers are thinking about their people, where they are and maybe moving them maybe in the company but moving in the team but not letting people go.

This idea of managing your career is one that is new. I encourage people to do it all the time. Particularly now because we know the Department of Labor Statistics says that 40% of Americans will be laid off at least once in their lifetime. Whereas in the past, it was a stigma. Now you can expect it. It’s a reality. It helps you to think about that freedom. The other thing is, we talked about this from a generational perspective.

You’re going to have all these different arrows in your life. I run into people all the time who’ve been doing something for a decade or more. Now, they want to do something different. They don’t even think about where to start because they never thought that they would want to do something different. That is the heart of what I do every day, talking to people about how to plan their career.

How To Get Your Career In Shape

How do you in your work with your clients or in these workshops that you run with groups of people boil it down to the handful of practical things that you’re pushing them to do or think differently about relative to your shape framework?

I ask them to ask themselves these three questions. Do you have the career you need? Does your career provide you with the time and the compensation to do what you need to do to take care of yourself and those who are depending on you? Do you have the query career you need? The second question, do you have the career you want? Does your career provide you with satisfaction? Is it something that you want to do? Is it aligned with your passion or your purpose?

Is it what you want to school for or train for? Is this something you even want to do? Do you have a career you want? The third is, do you have the career you deserve? Does your career give you the respect, the compensation, and the resources that access based on things you have done because you have earned it? If the answer is no to any of those questions, then it’s time to get your career in shape.

What are some of the things that you’ll then work with people to do specifically to get their careers in shape?

We go through the framework. We’re asking them to look at, is it something that they can change in terms of their financial situation, their alignment with the person evaluating them, how are they using their voice, do they have good coping mechanisms, and do they understand their blind spots or are they a learner? We created an opportunity to build a roadmap for their career thinking about where they are and multiple options of where they want to go.

Understanding those gaps and then putting a very practical and achievable plan in place to get them from here to where they want to go. It matters when you get to that point in your career as many people do. You say, “What have I done with my life? What am I doing?” If you can ground in things that make you happy and bring joy and it’s going to be different things at different times in your career. You’re at peace and that’s a good thing. Peace of mind is a good thing when it comes to careers.

Multi-Generational Workforce: Peace of mind is a good thing to have when building your career.

That’s probably a good place for us to stop. Thank you for doing this a lot for our audience to take away. I appreciate having an opportunity to talk about different generations in the workforce, what matters to them and how you can navigate in a way that cuts across those generational differences and also your framework for getting your career in shape.

Thank you. Careers are journeys. I mentioned to you, in the top one and two boxes is compensation. It makes sense that we stopped our journey together a little bit to spend some time exploring that for folks.

—

Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

That was a great conversation with Candace. I enjoyed the opportunity to talk a bit about navigating intergenerational dynamics and the workforce. Also, this concept of getting your career and shape and her five-part framework that goes with that. Owning your career is something Candace and I clearly have a shared view on. It’s part of the reason why we started PathWise, which is the sponsor of this show. If you’re ready to take control of your career, you can join the PathWise community now. You can also sign up on the website for our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks.

Important Links

• Dr. Candace Steele Flippin
• Dr. Candace Steele Flippin on LinkedIn
• Dr. Candace Steele Flippin on Instagram
• Generation Z in the Workplace: Helping the Newest Generation in the Workforce Build Successful Working Relationships and Career Path
• Get Your Career in SHAPE: A Five-Step Guide to Achieve the Success You Need, Want, and Deserve
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram
• PathWise on TikTok
• PathWise on Twitter

About Dr. Candace Steele Flippin

Since 2016, Dr. Candace Steele Flippin has been a Research Fellow at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. As an engaged scholar, Dr. Steele Flippin is the author of the best-selling book Generation Z in the Workplace and Millennials in the Workplace. Her new bestselling book Get Your Career in SHAPE, released in March 2022, was based on her popular TEDx Memphis Talk, What Women Really Want… at Work.

Dr. Steele Flippin applies her unique background as a communications executive and management scholar to provide practical career insights on accelerating the leadership development of women and the future of the multigenerational workplace. She has been featured on Forbes, CNBC, CBS, NBC, and Today.com.

Named as one of the Most Influential Black Executives in Corporate America by Savoy Magazine, she is an accomplished communications strategist recognized for driving transformation in the industrial technology, financial services, medical device, and biotech industries. Dr. Steele Flippin has received over 20 communications and public relations awards throughout her career. Her expertise includes corporate communications, reputation and crisis management, media relations, corporate social responsibility, change management, employee engagement, and leadership development.

Dr. Candace Steele Flippin serves on the board of directors of Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation, The Woodruff Arts Center, the Board of Councilors of The Carter Center, and the Advisory Board of CulTRUE. She is a member of the Arthur Page Society and The Seminar. She earned her Doctor of Management from Case Western Reserve University, an MBA from Johns Hopkins University, and her BA from the University of Michigan. She also holds an Accreditation in Public Relations. She and her husband live in Atlanta, GA.