Dr. Oscar Edwards is a CEO, Advisor, Coach, Consultant, Speaker, and Instructor. He is the CEO/President of Higher Growth Strategies, LLC (HGS) and Founder/Managing Member of the Diversity Equity Inclusion Group, LLC (DEIG). His 40+ years of experience have been instrumental in helping community stakeholders access resources necessary for a sustainable environment. Committed to education and capacity building of diverse-owned small businesses, Dr. Edwards has been the lead finance faculty of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program at Los Angeles City College (LACC) for the past 14 years. He also serves on the board of directors of the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). He is a member of Venturewell, California Association of Non-Profits (CAN), Institute of Management Accountants, and the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA). He has spent much of his career explicitly serving Architectural Engineering and Construction (AEC), Energy and Public Transportation industries pursuing environmental impact mitigation and energy efficiency improvement.
Dr. Edwards is among a select number of venture innovation and entrepreneurship scholars recently convened by Venturewell and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to reimagine DEI at the intersection of STEM for BIPOC. He holds a BA in Economics from UCLA, an MBA in Finance/Marketing from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and a Doctor of Business Administration and Entrepreneurship (DBA) from Grand Canyon University. Additionally, Dr. Edwards is a True Storytelling Institute (TSI) Level I and II Certified Trainer, specializing in deconstructing and reconstructing narratives based on moral answerability, together telling, and sensemaking as an indigenous organizational and community engagement process to facilitate change. His vision, which is at the core of his work, is to empower an economy that incorporates community at its core and defines wealth as access and enablement of a sustainable quality of life that includes under-represented and under-resourced individuals, families, and communities.
