Consultant Directory

Bernardo Ferdman

Principal & Founder Ferdman Consulting San Diego, CA

Consultant Services: inclusion, equity, and diversity; DEI assessment; leadership development; executive coaching


Bernardo M. Ferdman, Ph.D., is Principal & Founder of Ferdman Consulting (https://ferdmanconsulting.com) and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Alliant International University. Bernardo’s focus is on supporting leaders and organizations to bring inclusion to life, and he is passionate about helping to create a more inclusive and just world where more of us can be fully ourselves and make a difference that matters. He is a leadership and OD consultant, executive coach, and renowned expert on inclusion, diversity, and leadership with over 38 years of experience working with organizations around the world years to foster inclusion, to implement effective ways of using everyone’s talents and contributions, and to build multicultural and cross-cultural competencies on the part of individuals, teams, and the whole organization, as well as to inspire individuals to find their own voice and make their full contribution. He is the creator of Inclusion@Work® (https://inclusionatwork.com), a digital coaching platform for learning about inclusion, and the Workplace Inclusion Inventory™, a pioneering research-based measure to assess the experience of inclusion and inclusive behavior in organizations. Bernardo’s recent book, Inclusive Leadership: Transforming Diverse Lives, Workplaces, and Societies (Routledge, 2021, co-edited with Jeanine Prime and Ronald Riggio), provides a comprehensive view of inclusive leadership. His prior book, Diversity at Work: The Practice of Inclusion (Wiley, 2014, co-edited with Barbara Deane), provides a state-of- the-art, research-based understanding of inclusion and how to systematically create it foster it, and navigate its challenges, and he has published and presented extensively on inclusion, diversity, cultural identity, leadership, and related topics. Bernardo is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and five of its divisions, including the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Society of Consulting Psychology. He serves as an expert panelist for the Global Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Benchmarks, and he served as president of the Diversity Collegium, president of the Interamerican Society of Psychology, 2021 H. Smith Richardson Jr. Visiting Fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership, and chair of the Academy of Management’s Diversity and Inclusion Theme Committee as well as its Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division. Bernardo was also the creator and first faculty director of the Inclusive Leadership Program at UCLA Anderson Executive Education, and he has conducted dozens of executive education and leadership workshops. In 2019, he received the Society of Consulting Psychology’s Award for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Consulting. Bernardo, who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina as a child, earned a Ph.D. in Psychology at Yale University and an A.B. degree at Princeton University. (Find more details at https://bit.ly/ferdman-bio)