Captain Simonia Ridley Blassingame, USN (retired), SPHR, SHRM-SCP earned her MS in Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School and her MS in Educational Leadership at Troy University. While on active duty, she served as military faculty with the NPS Graduate School of Business and Public Policy. As an innovative Senior Human Resources professional, she often restructured, redesigned, conceptualized, and implemented major initiatives to support strategic Navy objectives. She has a comprehensive background in a variety of human resources disciplines that include leadership and development, training and education, talent management, and data analytics. Additional competencies include strategic planning, budgetary oversight, program management, collaboration, stakeholder relationships, change management, operations management, and process improvement.

Currently she is the founder of SANE Leadership Incorporated where she coaches clients using various assessments to help individuals grow in personal leadership, reduce conflicts, and raise emotional intelligence. This improved performance has helped individuals reach goals and guided teams to higher levels of organizational effectiveness. She is the Director for Continuing & Professional Education at Gordon State College and has served as a non-profit President/CEO and as a Board Member of several non-profit organizations.