Chandra G. Irvin, M.Ed., PMM, CEG
Chandra is a facilitator and coach whose passion is to “help individuals and organizations discern and live in their true purpose.” 

Since 1994 she has served as president of Irvin, Goforth & Irvin LLC, a personal and organizational development consulting firm, where she has partnered with organizations domestically and internationally to effectively manage:

• Team alignment
• Personal alignment
• Conflict
• Chronic issues
• Diversity and inclusion
• The “human side” of change
• Complexity and ambiguity

Chandra is a certified master consultant and trainer of Polarity Management (PM) and senior associate with Polarity Management Associates (PMA). In 1995 she began partnering with PMA to help her clients supplement their thinking and create breakthrough strategies to address their most difficult, persistent challenges and their most exciting opportunities.  She has found the applications for PM to be impactful and sustainable and so have her clients.  Why?  It helps them to actually capitalize on the tensions they encounter in relationships and change processes, achieve their goals and “live in their true purpose.”

Prior to launching Irvin, Goforth & Irvin, her career included a number of management and leadership positions in corporate, higher education, local government, state government, and consulting organizations, where she led and managed operations, human resources, corporate communications and crisis management functions.  She recently completed tenure as executive director of the Diversity Strategy Consortium, a group of corporations which examined domestic and global diversity issues and developed strategies for advancing diversity leadership, accountability, communications, and performance.

Chandra is an author of Finding PEACE in Life, Work, and Love Listening to the Voice Within (Wheatmark Books) and co-author of Do You See What I See? A Diversity Tale for Retaining People of Color (John Wiley & Sons).   She has presented at numerous conferences and forums on these books and Polarity Management.

She has earned several professional certifications, a M.Ed. degree from the University of South Carolina, a B.S. degree in Business from Winthrop University, has completed post-graduate studies at the University of North Texas and is a graduate of CoachU.

Nat Irvin II, is a principal of Irvin, Goforth & Irvin and the “W.M. Strickler Executive in Residence, Professor of Management,” at the College of Business of the University of Louisville. He is also the 2008 Visiting Executive Professor of future studies at the Babcock graduate School of Management, Wake Forest University. He is the founder and president of Future Focus 2020™ founded in 1996 as a non-profit, non-partisan 501c3 corporation dedicated to providing leadership in bringing futurist thinking to urban American and minority communities.

Irvin has engaged many groups and organizations in strategic conversations about the future focused on the significant social, political, economic, technological and environmental trends and events that will have the greatest impact on urban communities by the year 2020 and beyond.

In 2005, he was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the World Future Society, Bethesda, Maryland. He is chair of the 2008 Annual World Future Society Meeting, Washington, DC.

He has been quoted in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The BBC, Christian Science Monitor, ABC News, Essence Magazine, Black Issues in Higher Education, Financial Times, among many other news organizations. Nat was a columnist for the Winston-Salem Journal, distributed by Media General Newspapers for over 15 years. He has provided commentary for NPR’s Weekend Edition and served as a regular member of the roundtable on NPR’s News and Notes hosted by Ed Gordon and Faria Chideya. Irvin is also the voice of “N2 the Future” a new futurist thinking educational program aimed at urban audiences which debuted January 2006 on “Syndication One,” produced by Radio One, the nation’s premier urban radio network in the country. “N2 the Future” can be heard in 30 major cities in America.

Irvin serves as a member of the Kraft Multi-Cultural Advisory Council which provides expertise on diversifying the company’s workforce and develops strategies for reaching the emerging urban consumer markets. He is also an advisor to a new proprietary research study on African American consumer behavior and the emergence of identity among ethnic minority groups conducted by Starcom MediaVest Group. Ranked as one of the largest brand communications groups in the world, Starcom MediaVest Group encompasses an integrated network of media, entertainment marketing, sports sponsorships, and event marketing and multicultural media.