Inclusion & Engagement Leadership Essentials

Christian Baldia is a Managing Director at UWG and a member of the Global Reflections team. He specializes in organizational analytics/strategy and talent development. He also teaches at graduate courses at Columbia University and New York University on organizational change management, data analytics and data visualization.

Christian previously served at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a Senior Financial/ Economic Analyst. He also worked as an investment banker in mergers and acquisitions at Butler, Chapman & Co. and in municipal finance at UBS. In addition, Christian served in the Clinton Administration as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Treasury Department and as a staff member for the White House.

Christian graduated from the University of Pittsburgh’s University Honors College with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in Politics, Philosophy & Economics (PP&E) and in the History & Philosophy of Science. He also earned a Masters in Public Policy degree with a concentration on business-government policy and financial markets from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Douglas C. Freeman heads Global Reflections, the diversity and inclusion practice at UniWorld Group, Inc. a global, multicultural, communication and advertising firm. Global Reflections is a sophisticated line of client offerings that provide corporations with a deep portfolio of holistic diversity and inclusion best practices, customized to the client’s specific business needs. Mr. Freeman and UWG have completed diversity and inclusion projects for some of the world’s leading organizations, from Disney and Major League Baseball to Morgan Stanley and the European Union Commission in Brussels.

Mr. Freeman has served as Vice Chairman of the United Nations Gender Equality Experts Panel, was named a 40Under40 business leader by the NYC Network Journal and is a former board trustee of Georgetown College (US educational partner of Regents Park College, Oxford University). He recently served on the Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council at the JFK School of Government, Harvard University.
Mr. Freeman holds a master’s degree in public policy, focused on international trade and finance, from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley.
He is a two-time British Columbia Under-19 Rugby All-Star; was a two-time Canadian Universities “All-Canadian” (Ontario Universities) and was selected for the Canada Under-21 team as a Rugby All-Star. Mr. Freeman is the son of Grammy Award-winning conductor Maestro Paul Freeman, the first African-American to lead a Canadian Symphony Orchestra.

Monique Nelson is chair and chief executive officer of UWG, the country’s longest-standing multicultural marketing and advertising agency. She took the helm of the agency in May 2012, when founder and advertising pioneer Byron Lewis retired.

Headquartered in Brooklyn, with offices in Detroit, Atlanta and Miami, UWG maintains a list of esteemed clients. Today, this list includes Ford Motor Company, Colgate-Palmolive, The Home Depot, Bacardi U.S. and Coca-Cola. As one of the country’s leading multicultural agencies, UWG services its clients with General Market, Black, Hispanic, Asian and LGBT marketing and advertising, digital and traditional advertising, consumer insight, public relations, consumer healthcare communications and cultural fluency consulting.

Fred Smith is on the Global Reflections team, the diversity and inclusion practice at UniWorld Group, Inc. Additionally, Fred is Program Director at the University of Houston Learning Skills For Life and the CEO/Founder of Global Ascent Consulting (GAC), a global management consulting firm that emphasizes a collaborative, client-centric process to design solutions that improve organizational performance.

He has over 25 years of experience in management consulting, human resources, diversity management, compliance and training. His experience with a variety of clients and sectors provides Fred with the broad background to tailor solutions that deliver results.

Fred earned a BS in Secondary Education from Texas A&M University, PHR Certification from Rice University and has attended the Babson School for Business Executive Leadership Program and the Center for Creative Leadership Executive Program.