Dr. Monica Sylvain has spent 30 years consulting and coaching executives at multinational corporations across financial services, higher education, commodity chemicals, and non-profits. Her expertise spans inclusive culture transformation, identification and retention of diverse talent, corporate social responsibility, ESG, and board diversity.
As the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer of IBERIABANK, Monica convened the board and C-Suite to generate buy-in and directional agreement. From there, she established a baseline by conducting a 12-state listening tour with 1,000 associates, performing qualitative and quantitative assessments, and assembling multi-layered talent maps. Through that process, she guided the CEO to define high-level goals for the entire organization. By aligning associate feedback with business objectives, she identified the key internal and external DEI business drivers and crafted the first-ever enterprise-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) vision, mission, values, and strategic plan.
Monica regularly speaks for the American Bankers Association DEI Summit, American Alliance of Museums, Women Empowerment Conversations – Leadership River Region, the Talent Development Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, and the Louisiana Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Diversity and Inclusion Summit.
Monica earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering magna cum laude from Howard University and a Ph.D. with honors in Analytical Chemistry from Louisiana State University. She was the founding Director of the LA-STEM Research Scholars Program, recognized as a national model for diversifying and transforming STEM undergraduate education.