Coretha M. Rushing, SHRM-SCP
Coretha Rushing has over 30 years of corporate business and leadership experience.
She has worked in various executive roles at Equifax Inc., The Coca-Cola Co., Pepsi, IBM and Cameron Wesley LLC and also had her own human resource consulting firm. Additionally, she has provided consulting services and served on various nonprofit boards. She currently serves as a board member of 2U Inc., an educational technology platform company, and is a member of the Compensation and Succession Committee.
Coretha served the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a 300,000-member global human resource organization, for eight years as a board member. During that period, she served as board chair and board chair emeritus. Currently, Coretha serves as an executive coach to various clients. She also provides advice and counsel to Kano Partners, a private investment partnership specializing in the acquisition, support and sale of family and founder-based businesses and startup businesses. She also serves as an advisor for Evident ID Inc., a tech company that supports companies that want to screen and contact trace employees to monitor COVID-19 status.
Coretha retired in January as the senior vice president and chief people officer for Equifax Inc., a 3B global credit and data analytics organization currently based in 24 countries. She joined the firm in May 2006 and led the global HR organization and the company’s Foundation during its greatest period of financial growth, global expansion and product innovation and during its biggest business challenge: a cybersecurity breach.
Prior to joining Equifax, Coretha served as president of Cameron Wesley LLC, a human resource strategy and executive coaching firm.
From 1996 to 2004, Coretha held progressively senior roles at The Coca-Cola Co. She was promoted in 2000 as the first woman and Black EVP, chief people officer, for the company. During her tenure as the chief people officer, she played an instrumental role in the resolution of the largest U.S. racial discrimination lawsuit, working with the board of directors and a court-appointed board chaired by Alexis Herman, a former U.S. secretary of labor. Coretha also led the development of leading-edge people programs and initiatives that serve as the foundation for the company's current leadership and employee programs designed to ensure business success and leading-edge diversity, inclusion and equity programs. Other experiences include working as the vice president, human resources, for the Midwest division of Pizza Hut, a division of PepsiCo.
She began her global HR career at IBM where she held several roles during her 10 years across all HR disciplines, supporting diverse businesses in various major IBM US locations.
A native of Virginia, Coretha received her undergraduate degree in education from East Carolina University and holds a Master of Education with an emphasis in human resources and counseling from The George Washington University.
She is active in several professional and community organizations and has served as a panelist and keynote speaker at various business, university, women and human resource conferences. She has received numerous community awards and has been recognized for four consecutive years (2016-2019) for outstanding business achievements by Black Enterprise.
She currently resides in Atlanta and St. Petersburg, Fla., with her husband, Howard Smith.