Turner HR Consulting helps mission-driven organizations strengthen their people, culture, and talent functions, whether through fractional leadership, a focused project, or trusted counsel to leaders and boards.
Senior HR leadership for organizations between leaders, building HR capacity, or needing experienced executive guidance on a part-time or transitional basis.
Trusted counsel for executives, boards, and senior leaders navigating organizational change, culture, conflict, and complex people decisions.
Search support for executive and leadership roles, from position profile development and outreach through screening, slate development, and interview process advising.
Focused project work in areas such as compensation, organizational structure, talent strategy, employee relations, and HR operations.
Lauren Turner is a human resources executive and organizational strategist with more than four decades of experience leading people, culture, and talent functions in higher education and the nonprofit sector. She founded her consulting practice to help organizations strengthen their HR and talent strategies, improve organizational effectiveness, and navigate periods of change and transition.
Most recently, Lauren served as Senior Vice President of Talent & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she reported directly to the President and oversaw all aspects of human resources for an institution of approximately 1,200 faculty and staff. Her work spanned compensation, benefits, talent acquisition, performance management, learning and development, organizational development, employee engagement, labor and employee relations, and HR data and analytics.
She began her career at Mount Holyoke College in the Office of Personnel Services and, over three decades, advanced to Director of Human Resources, earning her bachelor’s from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her master’s in psychology from Mount Holyoke. She then spent more than a decade at the University of Massachusetts Lowell as Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources and Organizational Strategy & Effectiveness, where she also earned her PhD in Leadership and Organizational Studies from the Manning School of Business.
A longtime educator and researcher, Lauren has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in human resources, leadership, and workforce diversity, and her scholarship examines how cultural intelligence and transformational leadership shape organizational practice. She has contributed to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) for more than 35 years, serving on its national Board of Directors and as Board Chair, and received the association’s Donald E. Dickason Award for distinguished service to the profession.