About Angela Berg, Founder
I'm Angela Berg, the founder and lead consultant of Perelaks.
I help leaders and their companies more persuasively navigate today’s highly complex and increasingly controversial landscape of making change, speaking out or delivering tough messaging.
From HR Recruiter to HR Consultant
My HR career kicked off on the corporate side as a recruiter and HR generalist. From those roles, I gained valuable, firsthand experience in the HR function and insights on its strategic role and challenges within the broader business.
In 2000, I joined the global HR consulting firm Mercer as a consultant in the Career segment, initially focusing on communication and change management where I supported my clients on a broad range of HR campaigns and initiatives in career, engagement, pay and benefits. I also had opportunities to work with clients on collective bargaining communications. I held multiple leadership roles in Mercer's Career business, including the North America Workforce Communication and Change Management Co-Leader as well as regional leadership roles on the West Coast.
As a Partner at Mercer, I maintained a busy consulting load while working with many of the firm’s largest, household-name clients, spanning technology, aerospace, entertainment, health care, manufacturing, and financial services.
The Journey Into Corporate DEI
My first work in DEI began in the early aughts. Millennials were joining the workforce in droves, challenging the long held Boomer status quo. (As my Gen X cohort and I well know, our numbers were simply too small to radically transform Boomer corporate culture.) As these multi-generational differences began to dramatically play out in the office, factory and beyond, I had an opportunity to experiment with novel engagement tactics and leverage emerging technology to address them.
Later, as we emerged from the Great Recession, I was invited to partner with Mercer's new financial wellness team to explore novel data and technology approaches to better pinpoint and address the unique total rewards needs of diverse workplace cohorts, taking into account life stage, gender and other factors. As a result of that work, I had an opportunity to participate in the launch of Mercer’s landmark When Women Thrive global gender research.
In 2019, I became the leader of Mercer’s global DEI consulting practice where I had the opportunity to engage and consult 100+ clients on DEI strategy and implementation. During my 4-year tenure in the role, I was a principal contributor to Mercer's 2020 When Women Thrive study and the firm's 2022 study on Black Americans in the U.S. workforce, Stepping Up for Equity. I also contributed to gender-focused research for the World Economic Forum.
I left Mercer in 2023 to launch my private DEI consulting practice, Perelaks.
Shifting Into Alternative Perspectives and Paths
My work in DEI has helped me better see and appreciate the deep complexities and challenges that today's corporate leaders, managers and employees face.
The U.S. especially, but really, as a result of massive migration, conflict and other movement of people, many parts of the world have been much more diverse. Not just in terms of race and ethnicity but in all sorts of dimensions of identity, experience, background and perspective.
Our places of work are similarly layered, but this same rich diversity can greatly complicate how we manage even the most fundamental workplace actions, changes and messaging — even to the point where it can create significant organizational and personal risk.
Many typical DEI approaches are rooted in a segmentation model, from basic data and analytics to program development. The long held hope has been that honing in on differences will help close gaps and eventully lead to more equality. I consulted that way too, until I didn't.
In my experience and observation, we're not going to get corporate DEI right until we start looking at data and analytics in far more robust yet nuanced ways and design strategies based on guiding principles that bring people together instead of skewing them apart.
We need to encourage contrarian voices and enable open and productive debate.
My thinking challenges many traditional DEI practices. In fact, my PR consultant suggested that my tagline should be doing DEI differently.
And that doesn't seem to matter to my clients or the many people I speak with daily about these critical topics. To build and sustain workplaces where everyone can thrive in their careers and enjoy kindness and respect, we must explore these alternative perspectives and paths because there is still much journey ahead.
Press
I've been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Financial Times, Global Finance, BRINK, SHRM, HR News and more. I've participated in events for the World Economic Forum, World at Work, Financial Alliance for Women, HR Tech, and more.
Beyond Work
I have a B.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an M.A. from the University of Washington. I'm a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest and am currently based out of the greater Seattle area.
