Meet Tiffany Willis, Founder of Lean In Illinois, Chicago Women of Power, Chicago Black Women of Power Chapters of LeanIn.org and CEO & Founding Principal of City Virtual Consultants. Tiffany is also the first black woman Lean In regional leader.
Tiffany Willis-Johnson has a passion for people and a special interest in youth education and women empowerment. She is the Regional Leader of LeanIn.org and in 2015 she founded the Lean In Illinois, Chicago Black Women of Power, and Chicago Women of Power chapters where her and her team engage and lead more than 1800 women to help them achieve their goals and hone and develop their leadership skills. In 2019, Tiffany founded the City Virtual Consultants, a virtual support and project management consulting firm servicing UHNWI, real estate professionals and entrepreneurs. She also founded Willis Property Management in 2008, a real estate investment and property management company which buys, manages, and rehabilitates residential real estate properties in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
During the day, she is the Manager of Development Relations and Special Projects at Chicago Scholars reporting directly to CEO, where her primary responsibility is to manage the office of CEO, development and board relations, and to execute strategic projects. Tiffany is an seasoned administrative expert with a passion for operational efficiency, relationship building, resource optimization, and process improvement with more than two decades of experience in C-Suite administration and leadership coupled with technical training in project management and event management.
She's led teams in various industries spanning from education, professional consulting and financial services firms to the United States Government. Most recently, Tiffany led Midwest operations and administration at McKinsey and Company. She’s held executive level administrative leadership roles where she partnered with CEOs and other C-Suite executives to optimize administrative resources and design administrative support models to save time, cut costs and streamline business processes; she’s led large scale portfolio projects for Perspectives Charter Schools Network, an urban school network in Chicago, and has earned several awards for her contributions at work and in the community.
Tiffany earned an AACSB-accredited Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Governor State University and went on to complete Executive Leadership training at Stanford University. She is currently pursuing a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from PMI.org and a Master’s degree in Project Management from Northeastern University in Boston and has plan to obtain an Executive MBA next. In her limited spare time, she is an avid traveler who enjoys exploring new places with her three daughters, spending time with friends and family, reading, volunteering, and tackling residential rehab projects.
