Olalah is the chief strategist at YellowWood Group, the consultancy she founded in 2003. As a result of her leadership, she has earned several awards of merit including one for leading her company to record growth despite a crippling national recession. An accomplished strategist, Olalah and the YellowWood Group team have partnered with both private and public sector leaders to transform ideas into objectives and objectives into outcomes. Prior to founding the firm, which specializes in strategy development, strategic planning, and strategic frameworks, Olalah worked in a number of enterprise operations, administration, legal, human resources, and technology roles with broad responsibilities.
Olalah is appointed to the NCWorks Commission and holds the designated commissioner seat representing North Carolina’s nearly 900,000 small business owners. In this governor-appointed role, she advocates for small business initiatives through the North Carolina Department of Commerce and the North Carolina Workforce Development System. She previously chaired the Commission’s strategic planning committee where she led the formation efforts of the biennial strategic plan for ratification by the North Carolina General Assembly.
Olalah serves on the Leadership Council for the National Small Business Association (NSBA) where she advocates for legislation to strengthen and protect the small business economy and is a member of its Economic Development Committee. As a former Braintrust Contributor® for Forbes Small Business and a featured expert for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, Olalah is a trusted source whose credits also include BBC, NPR, New York Times, Marketplace, and Fox, as well as CBS, NBC, and ABC local affiliates.
Discover more about Olalah’s state and national leadership roles and her advocacy interests here.