Lorraine Hariton
Most companies have spent a decade publishing diversity statements without moving the numbers on women in senior leadership. The gap between policy and outcome is now a board-level credibility problem. The harder question is what disciplined, measurable inclusion practice looks like when public commitments alone have stopped persuading employees, investors, or regulators.
Lorraine Hariton is the former President and CEO of Catalyst and advises senior leadership teams on turning gender equity and inclusion commitments into measurable workplace outcomes.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Lorraine Hariton
- Six years leading Catalyst, the global nonprofit whose research and benchmarks Fortune 500 boards already use to evaluate their own progress on women’s advancement.
- Operating background that buyers in male-dominated executive teams take seriously: 15 years at IBM, CEO of two Silicon Valley start-ups, Obama-appointed State Department official.
- Specific authority on the measurement question. Catalyst’s frameworks on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion assessment were developed and scaled during her tenure.
- Credible on the intersection of bias and emerging technology, including how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through data and design choices.
Biography highlights
- President and CEO of Catalyst from 2018 to 2024.
- Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs at the US State Department under President Obama.
- CEO of two venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, Beatnik and Apptera.
- Senior Vice President of Global Partnerships, New York Academy of Sciences; co-founder of the Global STEM Alliance and the 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures programme.
- Inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, 2022.
- Crain’s New York Business Women of Influence, 2023.
- BS Stanford University, MBA Harvard Business School.
Biography
Catalyst is the research organisation whose data Fortune 500 boards quote back to themselves when they discuss the women-in-leadership gap. For six years that organisation was run by Lorraine Hariton, an operator with credentials those same boards understand: fifteen years at IBM, two CEO roles at venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, an Obama-administration appointment representing US commercial interests at the State Department.
That mix matters because the audience for serious DEI work has shifted. Senior teams now want practitioners who can speak the language of operating performance and capital discipline, not advocacy. At Catalyst, Hariton oversaw the development of frameworks used inside member companies on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion measurement, the kind of artefacts that survive contact with a sceptical executive committee.
Her work addresses the credibility gap between public DEI commitments and observable workplace outcomes. She speaks directly to the failure mode senior leaders fear most, performative policy that produces no change and erodes employee trust. She also works on how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through training data, an issue most executive teams are still under-prepared for.
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business presented her with its inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award in 2022. Crain’s named her to its Women of Influence list the following year. Her holistic view of where women’s advancement sits within an organisation, alongside compensation strategy, capital allocation, and technology governance, is what makes her useful in a boardroom rather than at a conference panel.
Key speaking topics
- Gender equity and women’s advancement in senior leadership
- Inclusion measurement and DEI accountability
- Bias in artificial intelligence and emerging technology
- Workplace culture transformation
- Future of work and flexible workplace design
- Empathic and inclusive leadership practice
Ideal for
- CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers, and CEO offices commissioning a measurable advancement strategy for women in senior leadership
- Boards and nominating committees evaluating their own pipeline credibility
- Senior leadership teams in male-dominated industries (financial services, technology, energy, industrials) working on inclusion outcomes that hold up to scrutiny
- Companies building governance around bias and fairness in AI deployment
Audience outcomes
- A clearer picture of what credible DEI measurement looks like, drawn from Catalyst’s published frameworks
- A sharper grasp of where bias enters AI systems and what executive teams should be asking about it
- Direct exposure to a practitioner who has worked with the leadership teams of many of the world’s largest employers on this agenda
- A more confident vocabulary for senior leaders, particularly men in executive roles, to engage with women’s advancement as a business strategy issue rather than a compliance one
Talks
A look at how the pandemic reshaped women’s participation in the workforce and what employers need to redesign to retain women and women of colour.
Key takeaways:
- Where caregiving and childcare structures still constrain workforce design
- What flexible workplace policy looks like when written for outcomes rather than optics
- How the future-of-work conversation changes when gender is the lead lens
An assessment of how technological disruption and shifting social expectations are testing the inclusiveness of corporate cultures.
Key takeaways:
- The cultural conditions inclusive workplaces depend on
- Where most companies misread the link between technology change and workforce engagement
- What senior leadership teams need to do differently now
A practitioner view on what actually moves women, and women of colour, into senior leadership roles inside large organisations.
Key takeaways:
- Why the double-bind stereotype keeps undermining performance evaluations
- The specific interventions Catalyst research has found to work
- How male executives can sponsor advancement credibly
How gender and racial bias enter machine learning systems, and what executive teams should be asking before deployment.
Key takeaways:
- Where bias enters AI through training data and design choices
- The governance questions boards should be raising now
- What inclusive AI development looks like in practice
The case for treating inclusion as a measurable management discipline, with Catalyst’s research as the anchor.
Key takeaways:
- Which inclusion metrics actually predict advancement outcomes
- How to set targets that survive executive committee scrutiny
- Why measurement is the precondition for credible DEI strategy