James Summers is the owner of The Summers Group, LLC (TSG). TSG designs business solutions that improve profitability through innovation, diversity and inclusion. Utilizing numerous innovation techniques and tools TSG helps business teams find and flip orthodoxies leading to breakthrough thinking and rapid implementation of new strategies. James has over 30 years of business leadership experience launching new and innovative products and services for fortune 500 companies and leading and directing profitable multi-million dollar business operations. For the Whirlpool Corporation, James was director of Global E-Business, led innovation teams and served as Diversity & Inclusion Community Outreach Chair. For Spiegel, Inc. he directed Electronic Publishing, launching Spiegel.com. For Hammacher Schlemmer he served as Creative Director. For one of the nation’s largest civil rights organizations, TSG developed and implemented diversity & inclusion programming and supplier diversity processes. For national and international diversity consulting firms TSG has conducted executive focus groups, facilitated workshops and developed Diversity and Inclusion Business Case certification curriculum. A recent invitee to a White House Briefing on Education, James and TSG are designing and developing a new process that aligns a unique collaboration of local business, public and charter schools, faith base community organizations and local government to improve literacy and increase employment in low income South Bend communities. Leveraging the tools and programs from South Bend’s new Pfeil Innovation Center, the experiment results will be reported back to Secretary Dunkin as a process to be replicated in other communities. James serves on several boards, committees and commissions including the Youth Service Bureau-South Bend; Community Forum for Economic Development; The South Bend Career Academy; The Community Education Impact Committee and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Entrepreneurship Advisory Board. A Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow, James is the current Economic Development Committee Chair for the 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend and the past Diversity & Inclusion Advisor for the Society for Human Resource Management Michiana and Oakbrook, IL chapters. For more information visit www.tsgdiversity.com or call 574-247-9280.