Biography
Beth Gifford is an executive advisor who brings a rare combination of perspectives to organizational leadership: entrepreneur, Fortune 500 executive, and community builder. Where most advisors have seen organizations from one angle, Beth has built them from nothing, led transformation inside $15 billion enterprises, and designed workforce systems that moved hundreds of families out of poverty — and that range shapes how she diagnoses and solves problems for the leaders she works with today.
As a founder, Beth has personally led every part of building an organization — sales, operations, finance, talent, and strategy. She founded and led three organizations, two of which were successfully acquired: United Staffing Services and Columbus Works, a nationally recognized nonprofit workforce model she built to solve poverty and employer talent shortages at the same time. Columbus Works generated more than $12 million annually in participant payroll and over $6 million a year in taxpayer ROI, with results verified by Quantitative Ventures and the State of Ohio Treasurer, and impact documented by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
As an enterprise executive, Beth has led transformation, operations, and workforce strategy across more than 25 years, in organizations ranging from $50 million founder-led businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises exceeding $10 billion in revenue — including NACCO, Honeywell, Fiserv, and Aetna — as well as public-sector initiatives spanning 72 government agencies and 7 collective bargaining agreements.
Today, Beth works as an executive advisor, running organizational diagnostics and advising founders and leadership teams through high-stakes decisions, with select engagements as a fractional COO. She is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, holds an MBA, and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Certificate in Non-Profit Executive Leadership. She is also an adjunct professor teaching management, industrial relations, and leadership, and has been recognized as a Smart50 honoree, featured in CEO Magazine, and named an Empath Global Leader.