Education

University of California at Davis, BA, Sociology/Women’s Studies
Fielding Graduate Institute, MS, Organizational Development

Experience

Elizabeth is a widely published author and researcher in the areas of leadership development, organizational culture, and entrepreneurship. At the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre (Fontainebleau, France), she has worked closely with Manfred Kets de Vries and other researchers on topics ranging from coaching and 360 feedback instruments, to corporate transformation and transitions in multi-generational family businesses. With 20 years of research, teaching, and coaching experience, her current focus is on how supportive leader-follower and team interactions advance the needs and objectives of organizations and the people in them.

The biggest challenge facing today’s leaders is…

naming and dealing with the secondary gains that keep them from stopping their own burnout. What are they really running from?

The most influential leader in my career has been…

Professor Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries of INSEAD, one of the first business school professors to apply a psychodynamic approach to the study of leadership. I’m tremendously fortunate to have been associated with Manfred for twenty years. He has a powerful intellect that he applies to a clear, real world vision. He mentors his people and pushes them to engage, and he values their ideas as much as his own. To borrow from Chaucer: “Gladly wold he lerne, and gladly teche… he is a good felawe.”

One place that is special to me is…

the pocket Asian-inspired garden outside my office window. I look up from my computer and see the seasons’ slow unfolding. It’s like drinking a long glass of green tea.

I’m inspired by…

quiet people and moments of sudden insight – the two are often related.

When I’m not working with clients, I’m…

still carrying them with me in my mind.