Holding considerable expertise in health care, human resource business strategy, and policy creation and compliance, Tania A. White has excelled as the chief executive officer and chief human resources strategist with Canary HR Consulting since 2019. While her company’s niche is health care, they consult for a diverse array of health care, non-profit, retail and restaurant establishments and organizations. Two of her clients who have been with her from the start are the PCC Community Wellness Center and the AeroStar Avion Institute, where she currently sits on the advisory board.
Between 2016 and 2019, Ms. White served the Loretto Hospital in Chicago as the director of human resources and later as the chief human resources officer. Previously, she was the regional director of human resources for Brookdale Senior Living from 2005 to 2016 and the human resources manager for the Aon Corporation and the Aon Center from 2001 to 2005. She began her career in 1996 as a management executive with the Target Corporation and with the Jerk Soul Caribbean Restaurant.
Embarking on her studies at Northern Illinois University, Ms. White earned a Bachelor of Science in textiles, apparel and merchandising in 1998. She continued to learn as she grew her career and earned a joint Master of Business Administration and master’s degree in human resource management at the Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry University in 2002. In 2016, she achieved multiple certifications from the Federal Emergency Management Association, including in national response framework, national incident management systems, the incident command system for health care and hospitals, and in the incident command system for single resources and initial action incidents. Mostly recently, she completed training in managing diversity and running company onboarding through LinkedIn in 2020.
Alongside her primary responsibilities with Canary HR Consulting, Ms. White has spent time as an executive leadership coach and a human capital management expert. She has also been partnered with Forbes since 2018, when they first approached her to invite her to become a contributing writer. Since then, she has written a number of articles for Forbes, including “12 Ways to Boost Your HR’s Succession Planning Effectiveness” and “Can You Really Measure the ROI of Company Culture?” in 2018; “12 Tips for Delivering Tough Feedback to a Manager as an HR Mediator” in 2019; “13 Ways HR Teams Can Improve the State of Their Annual Reviews,” “Creating a Culture of Value Should be Any Organization’s Primary Goal,” and “14 Things a Manager Should Never Do When Mediating a Co-Worker Dispute” in 2020; and “Leadershift: Switching Gears While Staying on Course During a Crisis” in 2021. She has also served on the Forbes Human Resource Council since 2020.
Since 2019, Ms. White has been affiliated with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., where she has chaired and led a number of community service projects and conducted scholarship fundraising campaigns. She also sits on the board of Chicago Debates, a youth program that teaches children how to debate and speak up for themselves as well as giving them the opportunity to research things that are important to them. In her local community, she has been involved with the Girl Scouts of the USA due to her daughter’s involvement as a Girl Scout and volunteers at her local church to provide hot meals during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
A member of the American Society for Health Care Human Resources Administration since 2016, Ms. White maintains professional affiliation with a number of organizations in her field. She is particularly active with the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources, which is an organization designed to help African American professionals to network, share content, and find information and resources. She is further affiliated with the National Association of Health Services Executives, the National Association of Professional Women, the Society for Human Resources Management and the Fashion Industries Organization. Ms. White lives her life by the motto, “Treat others like you want to be treated. This is one of the key things in being a great leader.”
