I've dedicated my career to understanding and fostering the conditions necessary to spark innovation, spur alignment, and create lasting impact. Recognizing that companies are often held back not by technical challenges, but human ones, I've focused my work on helping executives and their teams mitigate or dissolve those barriers to progress through thoughtfully crafted experiences.

In my role as the leader of Deloitte Greenhouse Experiences, my team and I advance the “science of experiential engagement”, and apply these insights with hundreds of companies every year – diagnosing why groups get stuck, crafting methods that unlock opportunities, and facilitating immersive, interactive sessions that accelerate breakthroughs.

These breakthroughs are typically engineered within five physical environments – permanent Deloitte Greenhouse spaces custom-designed to break teams away from “business as usual” with low and high tech elements geared to promote positive change for senior executive teams grappling with adaptive challenges ranging from emerging marketplace disruption to organizational transformations.

I am also the architect and global leader of Deloitte’s proprietary working style system Business Chemistry®, used by more than 200,000 people around the world, co-author of the March/April 2017 Harvard Business Review cover story on Business Chemistry and of the book “Business Chemistry: Practical Magic for Crafting Powerful Work Relationships” coming out May 2018. I am a frequent speaker, facilitator and coach for global businesses.

Before taking on my current role, I spent twelve years in Deloitte Consulting Strategy and Operations specializing in customer and market strategy, and customer experience. Prior to that, I worked in Public Relations and Marketing at The Benjamin Group Inc. I have an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a BA in Science, Technology, and Society from Pomona College.

I'm a social-personality psychologist, author, coach, and the chief researcher for the Deloitte Greenhouse. I’m intrigued by the many ways we can integrate empathy and creative problem-solving into our work, our lives, and our relationships. These are my favorite topics to think, talk, and write about.

In my current role at Deloitte, I guide leaders and teams to explore how their work is shaped by the mix of individuals making up the team and I coach them in creating cultures in which each member can thrive, contribute at their highest level, get creative together, and get more of what they want from work and life. I'm the primary author of the Business Chemistry Blog and I’ve co-authored two books with my Deloitte colleague Kim Christfort. Most recently we released The Breakthrough Manifesto: 10 Principles to Spark Transformative Innovation. Previously we released Business Chemistry: Practical Magic for Crafting Powerful Work Relationships.

I also recently released a more personal book—Divorce by Design: What If Staying or Leaving Aren't Your Only Options?— about challenging the default, conventional solutions to an unhappy marriage, and applying design thinking to create a divorce that's better than the norm. In it, I tell my story, with its ups and downs—the happy, hard, and humorous times. I also share my expertise in creative problem-solving and offer practical advice for readers who want a third option, one that's better than staying miserably married or tearing their family apart.

Prior to joining Deloitte, I worked at the Great Place to Work Institute, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Along the way, I've earned a PhD in social-personality psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, as well as an MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University. I am a trained professional coach, certified by the International Coaching Federation and the Coactive Training Institute.

While I live in New Jersey now, I have strong Minnesota roots. When I can get to the woods, mountains, or a lake, those are my happy places. I'm an unapologetic introvert, so if I'm not out in nature, I'm probably on my sofa with my books, my space heater, and my dog, Lucy. Of course I sometimes venture into the world of other humans, to do something fun with my kids, hang out with friends, or volunteer in my community. Those moments bring me joy. So does arriving back home.