Edna-Jakki is available for speaking engagements in the US and internationally. She engages audiences authentically in topics such as business, management, leadership, team, personal growth, communications & interaction, mindful living, a healthy and fit lifestyle, stress management, and how to integrate all centers of being: mental, spiritual, and physical.  Currently residing in Charlottesville, Virginia, she owns Njira, Inc. dba Njira Consulting, Facilitation & Training, DanceFit Movement Center, and EJMProductions. She is also Founder and Artistic Director of Experience Dance Theatre.

 "Edna-Jakki is one

of the most powerful speakers I know.

Always very relevant

and she definitely

knows her stuff!" ... Leadership Program participant.

Biographical Profile

Edna-Jakki Miller is the multi-talented president of Njira, Inc., a consulting and training firm which specializes in helping small businesses, corporations, organizations, and individuals to thrive. Njira, Inc. “provides results-based solutions to improve effectiveness and efficiency using a full range of products and services in Business Planning and Management; Leveraging and Managing Diversity; Organization Development and Change; Communications and Interaction; Individual and Team Development; Computer, Internet and Information Technology; and Quality Process Management” (Miller, 1999). 

In its brochure, Njira Consulting offers to potential clients a partnership for objectively and professionally identifying and analyzing management and business challenges, developing possible solutions, and, if requested, implementing chosen solutions.  Njira Consulting offers a wide variety of services, including training seminars and workshops in diversity strategy and management, communications and interaction, planning and goal setting, team building, and leadership development. 

In addition to her business consulting, Ms. Miller also owns and directs DanceFit, a business that offers group fitness training and individual fitness training and consulting.  Believing strongly in the importance of a well-rounded life, Ms. Miller focuses on both the mind and the body in her consulting work.  Under her DanceFit banner, she offers services ranging from fitness facility start-up and management to individual fitness training and on-going fitness classes that provide “a balanced and energizing programs that will strengthen your body, expand your mind, and lift your spirits” (Miller, 1999).  She is founder and Director of Experience Dance Theatre (EDT), a semi-professional dance group that performs for audiences locally and regionally in Charlottesville, Virginia and EJMProductions, a business that offers acting, dance, and modeling training and video production services.

Ms. Miller comes to private consulting from a decades-long career in telecommunications, where she honed skills in systems development and management, product and project management, organizational development and training, diversity strategy and leverage, and business effectiveness.  Since 1973, when she was selected to participate in Ohio Bell Telephone’s initial Management Development Program and led a “blitz crew” of installers and repairmen focused on improving service to targeted communities, Ms. Miller has combined an ability to do with an ability to lead and teach others.  A member of AT&T’s management team from 1976 to 1998, Ms. Miller has been Information Systems manager, Capital Budget and Financial Systems manager, Training manager, Marketing and Operations manager of AT&T’s School of Business and Technology, Diversity and Quality Product Line/Curriculum manager, and Program Development manager for several in-house organizational training and development efforts.  Ms. Miller holds a B.S. and M.Ed. in Exercise Physiology, and an M.B.A. from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Ms. Miller, will impress you with her honesty, directness, and self-awareness.  It is clear that Ms. Miller has trained herself to have a counselor-like self-awareness, and the ability to notice one’s own issues while remaining focused on the client and task at hand which is a crucial consulting skill that separates her from the rest. 

While Ms. Miller realizes that client issues must be addressed before progress can be made, she focuses on providing principle-centered, results-oriented consulting services that objectively analyze and describe behavior rather than subjectively explore personal issues. Using both mediation and counseling techniques, Ms. Miller works to allow expression of all client wants, needs, and issues while at the same time encouraging objectivity and communication. She also avoids playing “psychologist” and uses referral when it seems appropriate. 

An important part of Ms. Miller’s work ethic and consulting style is her understanding that business is business, not a process of collecting friends, and she strives to develop work relationships based on honesty, mutual respect (both technical and personal), and freedom from assumptions.  One of her primary rules as both a consultant and an individual is to avoid second-guessing people.