Amy Hilliard
Adjunct Associate Professor of Strategy
Biography
Amy S. Hilliard is an award-winning senior corporate executive, serial entrepreneur, board member, author, international speaker and educator. Known as the "Reinvention Specialist" Amy honed her skills in strategy, consumer marketing, product development, acquisitions, advertising, retailing, and general management from experience with Fortune 500 corporations, legacy entreprenurial companies, and her own businesses.
A native of Detroit, she is an honors graduate of Howard University and the Harvard Business School. At Harvard, she earned the Max and Min Cohen Award for Excellence in Retailing. For over 25 years, The Hilliard Group, her pioneering strategic marketing consulting firm has helped clients including Nielsen, IBM, Pandora Jewelry, BET Networks, American Express, HBO, The GAP, PepsiCo and others penetrate multicultural markets. In 2001, using her own recipes, she founded The ComfortCake® Company, makers of “Pound Cake so Good it feels like a Hug,“ which gained national distribution with United Airlines, Walmart, a McDonald’s test market and Home Shopping Network among others. Amy now licenses ComfortCake’s intellectual property and Sugarless Sweetness®, a patent-pending sugar substitute.
Previously President of Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the global legacy cosmetics company focused on women of color, Amy also held executive positions with Bloomingdale’s, Gillette, Pillsbury, Burrell Communications, and L’Oreal. Her marketing innovations to build one of Gillette’s brands into a $100 million-dollar business was documented in a case study for the University of Virginia’s Darden Business School.
Amy has taught or lectured at top business schools across the country and has been an Adjunct Associate Professor of Strategy at Booth since 2021. She teaches MBA's how to "Pivot for Success," a course based on her book pubished by Wiley, and endorsed by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Meta/Facebook; Dr. Wayne Frederick, President of Howard University; Linda Darraugh, Executive Director of Levy Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern's Kellogg Business School, and is also supported by First Lady Michelle Obama.
Amy is passionate about her faith, community, health & wellness and is the proud mother of two young professionals. A lover of learning and life, Amy served two terms as a Trustee of Howard University, thirteen years on Pepsico"s Multicultural Advisory Board, and currently sits on the LeanIn.org Advisory Board. Amy's blog, Sizzling After 60 - Thriving at Every Stage of Your Life is popular among women of all ages.