Meet Andrea J. Applegate, Founder and President
Applegate Talent Strategies was founded on a simple but powerful belief: that workplaces should work for people — and that great leadership is what makes that possible.
Andrea Applegate is a leadership consultant, speaker, and workforce strategist with over 25 years of experience helping leaders become more intentional, inclusive, and effective. Through her practice, she partners with businesses, nonprofits, and public-sector organizations to transform workplace culture, build leadership capacity, and align talent strategies with real-world needs.
Andrea’s approach is grounded in the Mutual Learning mindset — a leadership philosophy that prioritizes transparency, curiosity, accountability, and compassion. She’s the creator of the Essential Four framework and the Great Leaders | Great Bosses training series, which equip leaders with the habits and behaviors needed to cultivate psychological safety, model accountability, and coach for performance.
Her path to this work has been anything but linear. From restaurant shifts to the Chamber of Commerce boardroom, from launching a national workforce nonprofit to leading operations at a major social services agency, Andrea has seen leadership — and its consequences — up close. Her consulting work is informed by deep systems experience and a belief that leadership isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you practice every day.
She founded Applegate Talent Strategies in 2016 to help employers move beyond transactional fixes and toward meaningful, people-centered change. Since then, she has helped hundreds of leaders — from business owners to city department heads — create the conditions for their people to thrive.
A writer at heart and teacher by nature, Andrea blends research, story, and strategy to help her clients connect the dots between how they lead and what results they get. Her favorite compliment? “You made something that felt complicated… suddenly feel clear.”
Andrea lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and dog, Jack. She credits her mom — a fellow writer and creative force — for planting the seed that still guides her work today:
“Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Meet Lora Fish, SHRM-SCP | Principal Consultant
Lora loves helping individuals, teams, and organizations discover strategies that help people to be successful in the workplace by building inclusive workforce bridges--- a place to go and a thriving workplace to land in. Her action-oriented and strengths-driven facilitation style involves rolling up her sleeves to set individuals and organizations on the path to growth. She believes we all have our own unique strengths and abilities, and it is our responsibility and our privilege to use them for the greater good. She is known for persistence and compassion that helps bring out the best in people. She brings an authentic voice and a listening ear to uncover the issues at hand and the agility to address whatever comes her way.
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Lora is a “journeyman” in the workforce and HR world, working in and partnering with for-profits, non-profits, schools, and government. She helps businesses successfully hire and retain their workforce and is comfortable in any environment, whether donning an apron to job coach in the kitchen to advising front line managers in a manufacturing environment or consulting with executives in the boardroom. During the recession of 2008, she helped downsized professionals get back to work.
She has led numerous teams to create innovative training for individuals from entry level to executive. She understands the needs of small businesses and has created all the processes that go into hiring, retaining and developing staff. She understands diverse perspectives, from the front-line worker to the C-Suite executive.
Lora earned her BSBA in Human Resources Management from The Ohio State University. She is an Innovative Leadership Institute Facilitator and a Society for Human Resources Management – Senior Certified Professional. She hosts a monthly Employee Engagement and Retention Virtual Book Club, coaches companies to set and achieve their engagement and retention goals and serves as a virtual discussion co-facilitator with the Great Leaders Great Bosses series and other workshops.
She provides Leadership Training for Emerging Leaders to increase diversity in leadership and assists business owners and their leadership teams to create people practices that take the headache out of working with humans, while creating better workplaces.
