ABOUT DR. TANA M. SESSION, JD
Comfort Is The Enemy Of Success.
Dr. Tana M. Session, JD has been saying it for thirty years. She says it to boardrooms, to conference halls, and to individual executives who have just read a 360 report that was harder than they expected.
She says it because it is the only thing she has found that reliably explains the gap between what a person or an organization is capable of and what they are actually doing.
THE OPERATING PHILOSOPHY
Five Things She Will Say To You Eventually.
Every engagement she runs, whatever the service, comes back to these. It is quicker to read them now than to discover them one at a time.
01
Comfort is the enemy of success.
Nothing that matters gets better while everyone is comfortable. Not a leader, not a culture, not a career. The work is finding the specific discomfort that is worth it and then staying in it long enough for something to change.
02
These challenges were not my fault, but they are my problem to solve.
She learned this early and she has never found a situation it does not apply to. An executive who inherited a broken team. An organization whose culture was set two leaders ago. The distinction between blame and responsibility is where all the useful work happens.
03
Most people are not underperforming. They are unseen.
Thirty years in human resources taught her that capability and visibility are different problems, and organizations routinely confuse them. It is why her book is called what it is called, and why her coaching starts by asking the people around a leader what they actually see.
03
Structure beats willpower.
Good intentions do not survive a hard quarter. Systems do. Whether it is a leadership commitment or a company-wide culture change, if it depends on someone remembering to care about it, it has already failed.
03
Breadth is the enemy of durability.
Two or three things done until they hold beats fifteen things attempted. This is the single most common correction she makes to a client's plan, and it is usually the least popular one.
HER TRACK RECORD
She Was Accountable For People Before She Advised On Them.
Most consultants who talk about culture have studied it. She ran it, for three decades, with her name on the outcome.
Dr. Session spent thirty years in human resources, including ten as the senior HR executive for a healthcare organization, a regulated utility, and a venture-backed biotech. She has run the talent review, built the succession slate, made the case to a board, and handled the exits for the times development did not work. The range is the point: an HR function inside a hospital system, a utility under regulatory scrutiny, and a biotech burning runway are three different jobs wearing the same title.
She founded TMS Business Consulting in 2014. Since then the practice has served more than 200 organizations, from Fortune 50 companies and fast-growth startups to federal agencies, municipalities, and member associations, across consulting, training, executive coaching, and keynote speaking.
30+
years in human resources, ten of them leading the function.
200+
organizations served since founding TMS in 2014.
435,000+
completions of her LinkedIn Learning courses.
4
books published.
Consulting
Organizational development, people strategy, cultural assessment, change management, and HR audits. The work usually starts by establishing what is actually happening, which is rarely what the leadership team believes.
Coaching and training
Executive performance coaching built on assessment and evidence of visible change, and custom leadership, manager, and team training built around the outcome a client needs rather than a catalogue.
Speaking and teaching
Keynotes, conference sessions, and speaker series for corporate, government, and association audiences, including SXSW and SHRM. She has also taught at UCLA Extension and California State University, Long Beach.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
She Started Life As A Case File.
Dr. Session was born into the New York City foster care system. She stayed in it until she was three and a half, and was then reunited with her biological family.
She does not tell that story for sympathy and she does not tell it often. She tells it because being a child whose file said one thing and whose capability said another taught her the distinction her entire practice now runs on: what a person is capable of and what the room currently believes about them are two separate facts, and most of the work is closing the distance.
"These challenges were not my fault, but they are my problem to solve."
DR. TANA M. SESSION, JD
The second thing that shaped the work happened much later, and she is unusually direct about it. She spent years as the senior HR executive people came to with their problems, while telling almost no one about her own. She hit the same career landmines she now coaches other people through, and she handled them by going home, telling two friends, and returning to the office the next morning with a smile on.
"I felt like I was the only one and I felt very alone. I knew I had to write this book when I became a performance coach for Black women and learned their stories were my stories."
DR. TANA M. SESSION, JD -- ON WHY SHE WROTE WORKING WHILE BLACK
That is the whole origin of the practice, in two parts. A childhood that taught her circumstances are not capability, and a career that taught her almost nobody says out loud what is actually happening to them at work. Everything she sells is a structured way of getting the truth on the table so somebody can do something about it.
OUR CORE VALUES
Three Commitments, And What They Cost Us.
Every firm publishes values. The only ones worth reading are the ones that occasionally lose the firm money, so each of these comes with the thing it actually costs.
ONE
Integrity
We tell you what we found, not what you hoped we would find. If the honest answer is that the problem is structural rather than personal, or that you do not need what you called us about, that is the answer you get.
WHAT IT COSTS
We turn engagements down at the first conversation, and we report results that are only partly good news when that is what the evidence shows.
TWO
Trust
What someone tells us in confidence stays in confidence. Contributors to any assessment are anonymous to everyone, including the person paying for it. Findings are aggregated, never attributed, and no colleague is ever named in a development document.
WHAT IT COSTS
Sponsors get themes and trajectory rather than the raw material, even when they ask for more, because an engagement where people guard what they say is worth nothing to anybody.
THREE
Compassion
We tell you what we found, not what you hoped we would find. If the honest answer is that the problem is structural rather than personal, or that you do not need what you called us about, that is the answer you get.
WHAT IT COSTS
Slower conclusions. It is quicker to confirm what leadership already suspects, and we would rather be right.
Nobody hires an HR consultant on a good day. What matters is how the people involved get treated on a bad one.
AWAY FROM THE WORK
She Took Up Rollerblading At Fifty.
Which tells you more about how she thinks than any credential on this page.
Dr. Session collects experiences she has not yet had, and she has a clear preference for the ones that come with adrenaline. She has stayed at a hotel where giraffes put their heads through the window at breakfast. She has chased an animal migration from a moving vehicle. She has gone up in a hot air balloon to see gorillas, and she has paraglided solo.
The rest of the time she is at a concert with her husband, cooking together, or at the gym, where she spent a stretch learning to box.
She did not take up a beginner sport at fifty because it was comfortable...And that is the whole point.
MY LATEST BOOK
Working While Black.
Working While Black: A Woman's Guide To "Stop Being The Best Kept Secret(R)"
A career guide for Black women navigating workplaces that were not built with them in mind. It is organized around the specific landmines Dr. Session hit herself and then heard described back to her, almost word for word, by the women she coached.
She did not write it alone. She persuaded a group of accomplished Black women to put their own experiences on the record alongside hers, including Swati Mandela, granddaughter of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.
The stories in it are not case studies. They are the reason she stopped keeping her own quiet.
Isabella Media Inc, 2021 · Hardcover, 246 pages · ISBN 978-1-7357256-4-2Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, and Bookshop.org
THE FOUNDATION
She Went Back For The Foster Parents.
In 2020 Dr. Session founded the From Foster Care To Fabulous Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) that gives financial assistance and resources directly to foster parents caring for children from newborn to four years old.
That age range is not arbitrary. It is exactly the window she spent in the system herself. And note who the money goes to: not the agencies, not the institutions, but the people who took a child in and then needed a car seat, a set of twin beds, or a month of clothing nobody had budgeted for.
"By providing financial assistance and other resources to foster parents in need, Dr. Session feels she is able to honor the memory of the foster parents she spent the formative years of her life with."
FROM FOSTER CARE TO FABULOUS FOUNDATION
How it works.
Foster parents actively caring for a child under four apply with a statement of need and a referring agency contact. The board reviews every application. Grants are awarded once in any twelve-month period.
Where it works.
Referral partnerships with foster care agency networks in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Incorporated in California as a nonprofit public benefit corporation and recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3).
What it has funded.
A newborn who arrived with only the clothes she was wearing. Two sisters, one and two years old, who needed beds. Three siblings under four who needed medical care and a bigger car seat.