Draft:Wanda T. Wallace

• Comment: Does not describe why the subject is notable and has all/nearly all primary sources. And reads like a CV. Lopifalko (talk) 17:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

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Wanda Terree Wallace (born August 7, 1956) is an American speaker, coach, author, radio show and podcast host, who helps leaders get out of their comfort zone, reach their aspirations, build high performing teams with an inclusive culture and improve the quality of all conversations throughout the organization. She is Managing Partner at Leadership Forum and former Executive Vice President at Duke Corporate Education and Associate Dean of Executive Education at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Early life and education

Wallace was born to Willard Ashley Wallace and Addie V. Austin.

Wallace received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Psychology in 1978, her master’s degree in Teaching (Mathematics) in 1979, and her Ph.D. in Psychology in 1985 from Duke University.

Career

After completing her doctorate, Wallace pursued teaching in a business school where she taught Marketing to an undergraduate class at UNC (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Realizing that business suited her interests more than psychology, she joined the faculty at Fuqua School of Business, Duke University eventually on the tenure track. She then worked at Duke as an Assistant/Associate Professor in Marketing for six years. Later, Fuqua decided to reorganize the M.B.A. program, introducing Integrated Learning Experience courses, one of which was on teams and leadership. Wallace volunteered to help design Fuqua’s first ILE course. From that point on, her teaching involved teams and heavily featured leadership. Wallace soon took a job in Executive Education at Fuqua, running a team of about 30 people.

While in Executive Education, Wallace had clients, a board, and a profit & loss statement, not unlike a small business. In 2001, she left Duke dissatisfied with the limitations of academic pursuits for the challenges the business world faced. In 2002, Wallace established her company Leadership Forum to fill the gap she saw in the marketplace.

At Leadership Forum, Wallace speaks, coaches, conducts seminars and workshops, and works with top teams in corporations worldwide.  She is passionate about helping leaders recognize the choices they have, observe the consequences, take control of their careers, and create more inclusive teams.

Wallace works with financial services companies and other blue-chip clients

Wallace is the host of the podcast and VoiceAmerica radio show Out of the Comfort Zone.

Publications

Books

Wallace is author of You Can't Know It All: Leading in the Age of Deep Expertise which addresses the balance between the necessity for leaders to be deeply knowledgeable about their fields. It emphasizes the realization that in today’s world leaders will inevitably find themselves managing teams whose expertise exceed their own.

She is also the author of Reaching the Top: Factors That Impact the Careers and Retention of Senior Women Leaders, which talks about the factors that impact women’s careers and what to do about it.

Articles

Wallace has contributed several articles to Strategy and Business, Harvard Business Review, Corporate Research Forum, Talent Quarterly, Changeboard, the American Psychological Association, U.S. Business News, and others.

Her selected research articles include:

• The Beginnings of Expertise for Ballads
• Characteristics and Constraints in Ballads and Their Effects on Memory
• The Wreck of the Old 97: A real event remembered in song
• Rhyme and Reason: Analyses of Dual Retrieval Cues
• The Beginnings of Expertise for Ballads
• Gender Bias and Substantive Differences in Ratings of Leadership Behavior: Toward a New Narrative (with Robert B. Kaiser)

Personal life

Wallace lives in New York City and London.