Discover the experienced professionals at Fundamental Advisory, led by founder and CEO Mindy Gulati. Our team is dedicated to fostering equity and innovative cultures across various organizations.
Mindy Gulati is the founder and CEO of Fundamental Advisory, a consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations excel in the areas of Culture, Leadership, and Strategy. Drawing from her background as a criminal defense trial attorney and more than a decade of consulting experience, Mindy partners with businesses, law firms, government entities, and nonprofits to navigate complex challenges, build thriving cultures, and implement strategies for long-term success.
Mindy’s expertise lies in aligning leadership teams, fostering inclusive and innovative workplaces, and addressing critical issues such as organizational crises, workplace bias, and team performance. Her proprietary framework—Awareness, Action, and Accountability—has been a cornerstone of her work, enabling leaders to drive sustainable cultural transformation and achieve measurable results across industries.
As a trusted advisor and leadership coach, Mindy is known for her ability to tackle difficult conversations and guide executives through high-stakes decisions. She develops and executes strategic plans, facilitates workshops, and crafts policies to mitigate risks such as harassment and discrimination while fostering equitable and resilient organizational environments.
Mindy’s thoughtful and strategic approach reflects her belief that cultural and leadership transformation requires "head work, heart work, and hard work." Her career has been defined by a commitment to opening minds, breaking down barriers, and empowering leaders to create workplaces where individuals and teams can thrive.
Under Mindy’s leadership, Fundamental Advisory has become a go-to partner for organizations seeking to overcome challenges, embrace innovation, and achieve lasting growth. By combining analytical rigor, emotional intelligence, and actionable strategies, she helps leaders drive progress and build a strong foundation for the future.
Denisha Jenkins is an Austin based Equity and Inclusion Consultant that hails from Louisville, Kentucky – home to a rich civil rights history and various movement leaders. As a servant leader, she has been improving systems and developing anti-racist, culturally responsive leaders within the education, healthcare, and economic development industry in the US and abroad for the last 13 years.
Prior to founding Kardia Advisory Group, Denisha pioneered a multi-faceted partnership between MIT and Singapore University of Technology, managed civic projects on behalf of the US State Department, and helped community leaders secure over 600K in grant funding to address disparate outcomes. With each project, she applies a trauma informed, solutions driven framework that prioritizes equitable outcomes and delivers sustainable strategies for disrupting bias and cultivating authentic belonging in small to large organizations.
Denisha “restores humanity within communities” by disarming, affirming, and equipping leaders with the tools they need to efficiently honor and navigate cultural nuances. She models restorative leadership by leveraging her intersectional background and interdisciplinary experience in the public and private sectors to name and dismantle systems that hinder belonging, excellence and innovation.
Workshops and trainings on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Issues such as:
Dr. Alejandra Rodríguez Mielke is a bilingual DEI professional developer, consultant, and coach with more than 15 years experience improving the educational experiences of underrepresented minorities. Utilizing her expertise in adult-learning and social justice, Alejandra supports current and future leaders transcend personal biases and systemic barriers to help build inclusive and equitable workplaces.
As a learning and development expert, Alejandra utilizes research-based approaches to develop and provide learning experiences that allow participants to listen and learn from each other, raise awareness, guide change, build capacity and develop intentionality and ownership of the process when working to improve practices and bring change. She understands that what’s important is not only the efficient delivery of information, but the analysis of the starting point, the focus on clear goals, and the guiding hand during the process.
As a diversity and inclusion coach, Alejandra focuses on two groups. First, individuals or teams who want to grow in their understanding and practice of Diversity and Inclusion measures can benefit from Alejandra’s coaching skills to create safe spaces for conversation and introspection. Through this process, deep-rooted behaviors & perspectives that impede true inclusion can be brought to light and discussed. In addition, Alejandra guides Latinx young adults, women and working mothers to find their voice and passion, and to use their own resilience and determination to build the confidence they need to successfully navigate the workplace.
Captain LaPonda J. Fitchpatrick (Ret.), ACE, ASC, SHRM-SCP, IDI® is the owner and senior consultant for her human resources, organizational development and law enforcement management firm, LaPonda J. Fitchpatrick, Training and Consulting for the Real World ™.
She is an internationally recognized expert and trainer with over 37 years of experience. With a diverse consultancy of local, state, federal, and international companies and organizations, both public and private, LaPonda helps organizations provide their teams with essential tools and insights necessary to add value to the workforce to increase their bottom line and productivity.
Having a passion for Human Resources Management with a focus on non- discrimination, gender equality, diversity and inclusion, and unconscious bias, LaPonda helps organizations improve their service to both their internal and external customers by understanding that an organization is only as good as its culture and its employees. She develops policies and procedures, makes organizational realignments, implements diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, provides individualized coaching programs and other necessary programmatic recommendations based on these analyses.
An avid researcher, LaPonda makes informed recommendations for compliance, implementation and strategic development through comprehensive analysis of local, state, and federal laws, regulations, scholarly works, articles, court decisions, global industry best practices and common sense. LaPonda is authorized to and uses the Global Diversity & Inclusion Benchmarks: Standards for Organizations Around the World© (GDIB©). Her findings and comprehensive analyses are always utilized as the foundation for training, coaching and organizational culture transformations.
LaPonda facilitates targeted focus groups and listening sessions, employee satisfaction surveys and strategic planning sessions. She develops and instructs on unconscious (implicit/hidden) bias, diversity, equity and inclusion, psychological resiliency, and workplace violence among other Human Resources Management and safety/security issues.
Prior to retirement with the Los Angeles World Airports Police, LaPonda was the Commanding Officer of the Professional Standards Section where she updated, developed and reviewed all policies, procedures, employee conduct (Internal Affairs), employee training (police academy and continuing professional), hiring standards and police officer pre employment investigations for over 1100 employees. LaPonda was the liaison to the EEO Coordinator and conducted and reviewed complex discrimination and sexual harassment investigations involving police and civilian employees through their conclusion. She served as a pre-disciplinary hearing officer and assisted the City Attorney with defending personnel decisions to the Civil Service Commission and in Superior Court. LaPonda had a unique role in that she represented both management and labor (union president) in collective bargaining negotiations and was a member of the City of Los Angeles Joint Labor-Management Committee that made recommendations on citywide collective bargaining contracts, employee administrative policy and procedures, and associated employee benefits.
Throughout her career, LaPonda was responsible for ensuring the safety, security, and regulatory compliance of the global gateway known as LAX and its satellite airports. After the events of 9-11, LaPonda conceived and implemented the Los Angeles Airport Police Homeland Security Section to ensure multi-agency law enforcement and public safety activities and responses were properly coordinated with airlines, other tenants, and local state and federal law enforcement and public safety organizations, Customs and Border Protection, both the Transportation Security and Federal Aviation Administrations, and other stakeholders to reduce LAX’s vulnerability to a terrorist event or catastrophic emergency. She also worked directly with airline corporate and ground security coordinators in support of their security needs and requirements. LaPonda developed the nation’s largest airport law enforcement bomb detection K-9 unit, expedited multi-agency intelligence sharing, and an on-site tactical response unit tailored to the aviation environment.
Courtney has more than a decade of experience in the equity and inclusion field developing and implementing strategic plans that incorporate change management process to support internal organizational structures and external performance measures. She developed and facilitated inclusive leadership and training programs for the University of Texas at Austin.
Courtney has more than six years of experience working in transportation with the Texas Department of Transportation as the Deputy Director of the Civil Rights Division overseeing implementation of federally regulated policies and programs on construction projects across Texas.
In addition, she served as the Senior Vice President of Equity and Community Partnerships with Austin Transit Partnership, where she supported the design of the first light rail in Austin. In her roles, Courtney acted in advisory capacity to executive leadership on topics around equity, employee engagement and retention, as well as developing community partnerships and creating data-driven community engagement processes.
Nicole K. Bell is an accomplished strategic planning, talent development and human resources professional with over 20 years of experience in designing impactful training programs focused on trust, team cohesion, leadership and equity. She is dedicated to creating inclusive, authentic, and liberating learning connections.
Nicole holds certifications as a mediator, Trust at Work practitioner and success coach. She is a graduate of the Leadership Women-Leadership Pipeline program (2016) and the Essential Class of Leadership Austin (2018). Additionally, Nicole is an Affiliate Practitioner of Courageous Conversations about Race. Her commitment to equity was recognized in March 2023 when she received the People’s Choice Equity Champion of Change award from DivInc.
In her spare time, Nicole enjoys being a devoted volleyball mom and cherished moments spent at comedy shows, movies, and indulging in ice cream with her daughters.
