Shelly Zaldivar, Ph.D.

About Shelly Zaldivar, Ph.D.

Dr. Shelly Zaldivar’s extensive professional experience includes five years in higher education and more than 20 years in strategy and execution leadership in the marketplace, primarily within financial services and customer-facing organizations such as Macy’s and Walt Disney World. She also worked at Bank of America as a Senior Vice President for Digital Servicing Strategy. In her final year at the bank, she was awarded the Annual Retail Banking Top Performer Award.

She has taught business and marketing courses at SAGU since 2011 and actively serves in several areas of ministry at her church including stewardship and altar ministry. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from SAGU in 2007, an MBA specializing in Marketing Management from the University of Dallas in 2010 and completed her Ph.D. in Management specializing in Leadership and Organizational Change from Walden University in the summer of 2018.

Dr. Zaldivar’s research interests include virtual/globally dispersed leadership; leadership challenges; organizational design and improvement, digital marketing, social media marketing, competitive advantage, entrepreneurship, and non-profit marketing. Her dissertation focuses on change management leadership within virtually led teams. Additionally, she is Six Sigma Greenbelt Certified, proficient in AGILE and DMAIC project management and is experienced in vendor acquisition and management.

She currently serves as a mentor for multiple women in leadership, focusing specifically on empowering them to not only achieve their goals but dream bigger. She consults with both for-profit and non-profit companies enabling them to understand better and predict the needs of their target market, influence their customers’ purchasing and focus on growing and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. Additionally, Dr. Zaldivar is extremely active in foster/adoptive care support ministry, including leading an online support group for foster/adoptive parents of children adopted at the age of five and above.