Author, Expert and Consultant on Women's Workplace Issues to Speak on UA Campus

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Ella L.J. Edmondson Bell, an author, managerial consultant and nationally recognized researcher on women’s workplace issues, will speak to faculty, students and the public at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 30, in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development at the University of Arkansas.

Bell is also an associate professor of business administration at the Tuck School, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H. She is considered one of the leading experts on organizational change and the management of race, gender and class in organizational life.

Bell’s talk, “Issues for Women and Women of Color in the Workplace,” is sponsored by the Office of Minority Affairs in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, Network of Executive Women, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, Office of the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, African American Studies Program, Multicultural Center, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.

Bell, along with Stella M. Nkomo, wrote the book, “Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity,” published by the Harvard Business School Press. The book was written to bring black professional women out of the shadow of white women and to encourage an authentic and healing dialogue between women, regardless of their race. Business Week Online reported on the book, saying it “offers an unflinching look at racism . . . and doesn’t shirk from taking on taboo subjects” that tend to separate women. Marcia Ann Gillespie, the editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine, described “Our Separate Ways” as “a fabulous book that I literally couldn’t put it down, making notes in the margins as I read it, so many important insights, so much wisdom.” The initial research for the book began with funding from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations.

While on the University of Arkansas campus, Bell will meet with UA female faculty at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, March 30, in the Multicultural Center and talk about “Surviving the Academy Experience: Advice for Women of Color.” She will also talk with faculty and businesses at 6 p.m. in the Reynolds Center on “Advancing Women and Women of Color in the Workplace and the Academy: Building Alliances.”

Bell holds a Bachelor of Science degree in early childhood education and behavioral sciences from Mills College of Education; two master’s degrees from the Teacher’s College at Columbia University; and a doctorate in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University.

Her research as focused on the career and life histories of professional African American and European American women and issues of work-life balance among women. As a consultant, she has worked with such organizations as Salomon Smith Barney, Proctor & Gamble, General Electric, Meridian Bank, General Foods, Southern New England Telephone Co., New York Public Library, and United Way. Her work has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte Business Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Working Women, Business Week, Black Enterprise and Essence.