Chief People & Culture Officer
Major League Baseball
New York, N.Y.
Michele C. Meyer-Shipp is Major League Baseball’s first Chief People & Culture Officer. Named to this newly created role in October 2020, she reports directly to the baseball commissioner. She oversees human resources, diversity, inclusion and culture, and off-field office operations for the League, supporting the Central League Office and all 30 Major League Clubs and 120 Minor League Clubs. An alumna of Seton Hall University School of Law, Rutgers University, and the Wharton School Global Strategic Leadership Program, she brings to the position experience as an attorney at national law firms and as a top diversity officer.
“My transition from in-house employment attorney to global chief diversity officer at Prudential Financial was a game changer,” she says. “This role taught me about cross organizational collaboration and leadership at the global level in a Fortune 100 company. I learned what it meant to build and execute sustainable strategy on a global scale, and how to drive change-management across an organization.”
Meyer-Shipp wants to build on diversity and inclusion policies, arguing, “We need leaders’ proactive engagement to actually drive diversity, equity, and inclusion across an organization. We need every person who leads a team to appreciate that they have to locally activate the DEI strategy by role modeling the behaviors that are required to drive progress.”
Her passion for collaboration and ability to truly listen well to others contributed to her success, she says, and adds, “I have become known for my uncanny ability to connect with all people. My general mindset is that I have never met a stranger.” She is most proud of raising three “healthy and productive” young adult sons (ages 23, 20, and 19) while managing a robust career. At this stage of her career, she is “focused on paying it forward and supporting the growth and development of our next generation of leaders.”
