Facebook pixel Faculty | Pepperdine School of Public Policy Skip to main content
Pepperdine | School of Public Policy

Faculty

Renee Baiorunos

Renee Baiorunos

Renee Baiorunos, founder of the Pomegranate Group, is an expert facilitator, skilled strategy consultant, and trusted coach and advisor. Renee approaches her work with the experience and belief that no strategy will be successful without an aligned and committed team to see it through.

Renee holds an MBA from Georgetown and brings more than 15 years of experience working with corporations and nonprofits in her roles with Ford Motor Company, the Children's Defense Fund, Edelman Public Relations, Community Wealth Partners, and LeaderFit. Renee is the incoming board chair at Miriam's Kitchen, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, focused on ending chronic homelessness through its work and as a founding partner of the Way Home Campaign.

Renee is a member of the Presidio Institute Faculty, teaching the course "Introduction to Cross Sector Leadership: Building Teams." Her thoughts on the intersection of culture and strategy have been published in Forbes' nonprofit community with the article, Why Organizational Culture is the Most Powerful, Practical Tool For Impact and What to Do About It.

In all areas of her work, Renee strives to create simplicity from complexity. She is adept at connecting diverse thoughts and perspectives in ways that unlock new patterns and paths forward for individuals and groups. Renee's goal is to build powerful teams and effective organizations to tackle complex challenges, while ensuring these teams are able to maintain the energy required to sustain themselves and their passion for the work.


Amy Farley

Amy Farley

In her role as senior consultant, Amy Farley leads client relationships and engagements, facilitates diverse leadership teams in bold decision making and supports their execution, and contributes to overall strategic firm initiatives. Amy has a unique blend of business, nonprofit, and foundation experience, with a proven record of leading cross-functional teams and driving creative solutions that have delivered increased revenue and growth. She has worked extensively in education and social service and has deep experience leading both nonprofits and foundations through strategy design and business case development. She has core expertise in facilitating transformational change through stakeholder analysis, engagement, and collaboration and has helped facilitate communities of stakeholders at both the city and state level to achieve greater measurable impact through collaboration. Amy has also guided numerous organizations through strategic planning and helped the leaders of both foundations and nonprofits develop new strategies, partnerships, and products that led to increased revenue and impact. Amy was a program officer at the Tiger Foundation, where she annually managed a portfolio of 40+ nonprofit organizations and investments, and provided ongoing consultation to over a hundred nonprofit executive directors in areas such as leadership development, growth strategy, finance, operations, and board management. Amy has also developed the strategy and operational infrastructure necessary to grow high performing nonprofit organizations as both the VP of Business Management at Harlem Village Academies and as the National Director of Operations for Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL). Prior to business school, Amy spent five years in the emerging leader management rotation program at John Hancock Financial Services.

Amy has a B.A. in Psychology from the College of the Holy Cross and an MBA from Boston University. She is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).


Idalia Fernandez

Idalia Fernandez

Idalia Fernandez, director, engages in strategic partnerships with leadership teams, provides client engagement oversight and supports the overall growth and development of the firm. Idalia brings decades of experience in education and workforce development programs. Her expertise is in leadership development, organizational management, strategy design, and program to mission alignment. She has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector and her passion is to help organizations thrive through strong leadership development. Idalia is focused on multiplying impact in various communities by leading the talent and business coaching program which embraces, supports and challenges nonprofit leaders to achieve their big bold goals.

Idalia was the president of the Hispanic College Fund where she brought together leaders in government, corporate and nonprofit sectors to implement programs to shift the trajectory of Latino students from dropping out of high school towards developing careers in business and STEM-H. Under her leadership, the Hispanic College Fund grew from a startup to a $7M organization. Idalia's experience in the private sector includes being a technical recruiter at Everyware, Inc. and a financial analyst at General Dynamics. Idalia has an MBA from Averett University and a BA in Biology with a minor in French from Boston University.


Seth Hufford

Seth Hufford

Partnering with InclusionVentures, Seth collaborates on the design and delivery of effective and inclusive leadership strategies and programming for cross-sector organizations. Utilizing his diverse experiences, he builds individual and team capacity to strategically address organizational and societal issues. Working across business, government, and nonprofit, Seth has engaged diverse groups of people from community activists to business executives. He has facilitated teams both large and small to tackle complex challenges, address inter-personal dynamics, and produce results.

In addition to working with InclusionVentures, Seth founded The People Group - a consultancy whose clients have included A+ Schools, the American Institute of Architects, Carnegie Mellon University, Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, Expedient Data Centers, NeighborWorks, Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children, The Presidio Institute, UPMC, and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

Prior to starting The People Group, Seth managed global executive education programs at Carnegie Mellon University's Business School, directed Coro's Leadership New York program, and facilitated Leadership Pittsburgh's Leadership Development Initiative. He gained valuable experience as chief of staff to an elected official, directing economic development at a Chamber of Commerce, and serving as a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton.

Seth holds a Master of Public Policy and Management from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Bachelor of Arts from Dickinson College.


John Kern

John Kern

John Kern, senior director, leads the growth of Community Wealth Partners' strategy practice. John is a skilled facilitator and has key expertise in guiding organizations to develop social impact strategy, including evaluating and defining strategic, cross sector partnerships. John has worked extensively in education, health and poverty-related issues with government agencies, social sector organizations and corporations.

John has supported a number of transformational social sector organizations in developing collaborative, multi-sector strategies, including City Year, AARP Experience Corps, ReThink Health, City Year, ReThink Health, Share Our Strength, and the Case Foundation. In 2013, John led an engagement with City Year to align a longstanding corporate employee engagement platform with City Year's long-term impact strategy to dramatically reduce the nation's dropout crisis.

Prior to joining Community Wealth Partners, John spent nearly seven years in the strategy practice at Deloitte Consulting where he advised senior government, nonprofit and corporate executives on organizational strategy, program design and evaluation, governance, and organizational capacity. In addition to his consulting career, John has worked extensively on healthcare and education issues at the community level, serving as a community organizer and policy analyst for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools and managing a grant portfolio for the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, focused exclusively on educational and health equity issues in the greater Washington region. John has a MPP from The Johns Hopkins University and a BA with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Kathia Castro Laszlo

Kathia Castro Laszlo

Kathia is an international educator, researcher, consultant and coach committed to facilitate transformational processes that lead to cultural healing and social innovation. She is professor at Saybrook University in the Department of Leadership and Management and is a certified coach in the Leadership Circle ProfileTM. Kathia has taught leadership, organizational development and strategy in the sustainability oriented MBAs of Presidio Graduate School (San Francisco), Bainbridge Graduate Institute (Seattle), Dominican University of California (San Francisco), EGADE Business School (Mexico), and Universidad del Medio Ambiente (Mexico). She is the co-founder of Syntony Quest and Global Leadership Lab, founding partner of The Journey Network, and has her private consulting practice, Magenta Wisdom.

Her interdisciplinary research and publications spans the fields of systems thinking, organizational change, leadership, and innovation. Her work expands systems thinking into systems being by integrating feminine, multicultural and experiential ways of knowing and relating. She is engaged in action-research on the design of new business and organizational models that support authentic leadership and collaboration for social impact. Through her understanding of adult learning, group creativity, and dialogue, Kathia has facilitated numerous learning and design processes in business, academic, nonprofit and community contexts in North America, Latin America and Europe and has coached hundreds of socio-ecological entrepreneurs seeking to blend business, ethical responsibility and higher purpose.

Kathia is holder of a BA in Marketing, a M.Ed. in Cognitive Development and a Ph.D. in Human Science with specialization in Social and Institutional Change which she earned as a Fulbright Scholar from Mexico.


Amy Lazarus

Amy Lazarus

Amy Lazarus is the founder and CEO of InclusionVentures, LLC, making welcoming and effective spaces the norm in workplaces and communities toward faster systems change. Lazarus is a master facilitator who consults on strategy, unconscious bias, productive workplace culture, employee engagement, Millennial leadership, inclusive interview practices, and implementing theory-to-practice. Select clients where Lazarus has conducted strategic consulting and interactive facilitation include: Deloitte, Arabella Advisors, the World Economic Forum (training cross-sector leaders), Clinton Global Initiative (Women at the Negotiation Table), Business Executive Education (How to be the manager everyone wants to work for in your organization), Stanford's Design School, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, the Fetzer Institute, and technology companies. Other clients and speaking engagements include The White House, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Bloomberg LP.

Lazarus brings 20 years of experience in the diversity and inclusion field to enable people and organizations contribute, thrive, and grow. Prior to launching InclusionVentures, Lazarus served as Executive Director of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue. Under her tenure, programs grew from serving 11 to 45 college campuses in the United States, Latin America, and Africa; expanded into workplaces focused on talent development, inclusion, and leadership; and earned revenue increased from 6% to 33%. Amy also founded PULSE, a neuroscience-based leadership retreat to catalyze inclusive talent. Amy is a master facilitator who consults on strategy, Business Resource Groups, inclusive interview practices, and implementing theory-to-practice for corporations, non-profits, and philanthropies.

As part of ICF International's Human Capital, Diversity, and Leadership practice, Lazarus developed and delivered leadership, inclusion, and manager trainings for federal agencies including NASA, Health and Human Services, Department of State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She designed and delivered a two-week social entrepreneurship curriculum for college women in Saudi Arabia. Amy was a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs, earned an M.S. in Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School, and founded Common Ground at Duke University. She is the outgoing Curator for the World Economic Forum Global Shaper DC Hub and is a recipient of USA Network's Characters Unite Award, Top 99 Under 33 Foreign Policy Leaders, Facing History's Upstander Award, the American Express NGen Leadership Fellowship, and was the youngest person inducted into her high school's alumni hall of fame. Amy is cited in Bloomberg Businessweek, The Washington Post, Barrett Seaman's Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You, and Robert Thompson's Beyond Reason and Tolerance: The Promise and Practice of Higher Education. She wrote a chapter for Dialogue Theories, Volume II, to be published 2016. From Shaker Heights, Ohio, Amy lives in Washington, DC and serves on the boards of Coro National, the Harwood Institute for Social Change, and Operation Understanding DC. She is certified in administering the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and DiSC profile. Amy practices tai chi and has sung back up for Aretha Franklin.


Jewlya Lynn

Jewlya Lynn

As the founder and chief learning officer of Spark Policy Institute, Dr. Lynn's work focuses on public policy and community transformation by working collaboratively with cross-sector stakeholders to solve complex problems. Through a combination of real-time learning strategies, evaluation, facilitation and stakeholder engagement, Dr. Lynn's work has contributed to lasting and meaningful change across multiple systems and issue areas including natural resources, climate change, nuclear security, cyber-infrastructure, food systems, health care, early childhood, education, human services, criminal justice and urban planning. She is experienced in working in high stakes environments where stakeholders are collaboratively developing solutions to complex problems that will directly impact the resources and roles of their organizations and of themselves individually. Dr. Lynn has facilitated, trained and coached in a variety of settings with many different types of participants from those with technical or political roles to community members and consumers.

In addition to supporting and catalyzing change in many different arenas, Dr. Lynn is an innovator who is always looking to develop, adapt, refine and document tools, processes and frameworks in order to make the complex work of solving societal problems less abstract and more hands on. These include widely-used tools to address cross-sector problems in the areas of adaptive planning, strategic learning, collective impact, and facilitation. Dr. Lynn also has a passion for capacity-building, and has helped organizations and individuals throughout the country develop their skills to make a meaningful difference.

Prior to founding Spark, Dr. Lynn managed the project designed to transform social services, juvenile justice, and education in response to the Columbine school shooting and has also worked for the Colorado State Legislature. She has a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from the University of Colorado at Denver.


Kathy Merchant

Kathy Merchant

Kathy Merchant, Senior Advisor, retired from The Greater Cincinnati Foundation after 18 years as its president/CEO in May of 2015. Prior to joining the Foundation in 1997, Kathy was director of The Pew Charitable Trusts' Neighborhood Preservation Initiative and a partner in the New Haven-based consulting firm Holt, Wexler & Merchant.

She is currently a Senior Fellow for the national StriveTogether cradle-to-career network where she serves as an advisor to the 60+ communities across the United States devoted to increasing the pace and scale of student success using a multi-sector collective impact approach. Returning to consulting, Kathy's areas of focus include impact investing, including innovative pay for success models; collective impact; subject matter expertise in cradle-to-career education and community development; and other areas of strategic philanthropy requiring multi-sector solutions to complex problems.

Kathy currently serves on the national boards of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Previous board leadership includes Council on Foundations, Community Foundations of America/GivingNet, Ohio Grantmakers Forum (now Philanthropy Ohio), National Center for Arts & Technology and SC Ministry Foundation.

In 2015, she received Northern Kentucky University's Lincoln Award, the Metropolitan Award and Indiana University's Spirit of Philanthropy Award.

Merchant graduated from Indiana University (BA) and the University of Connecticut (MSW) with degrees in social work. She earned a Diploma in Wine & Spirits (DWS) from the London-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust and completed the Certified Specialist of Wine (CWS) credential from the Society of Wine Educators (USA).


Isabelle Moses

Isabelle Moses

Isabelle Moses leads the growth of Community Wealth Partners leadership development and coaching practice. She has over 15 years of experience working with foundations, nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies. Her expertise includes developing leaders and managers, designing organizational strategies, guiding culture transformation and supporting leaders to make and manage change.

Isabelle is an accomplished leadership coach, consultant, facilitator and trainer. In close partnership with foundation and nonprofit clients, she has designed and delivered highly-rated, multi-faceted and multi-year leadership development programs designed to increase the impact of national networks of nonprofit organizations at the individual, organizational and network-wide levels.

She recently partnered with Share our Strength to advance its No Kid Hungry campaign in six new communities across the country with funding from the Social Innovation Fund. The campaign is a collaborative effort across private corporations; varied funders; federal, state, and local government agencies; and a broad range of community organizations and schools.

Isabelle's prior experience includes coaching and training social justice leaders to run more effective organizations as a partner with The Management Center and consulting roles with Accenture and Eagle Hill Consulting. Earlier in her career she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon and worked in community investing with Calvert Foundation.

She holds undergraduate and MBA degrees from Georgetown University and is a certified leadership coach from Georgetown's Institute for Transformational Leadership. Isabelle is also an affiliate trainer for Race Forward's Racial Justice Leadership Institute.


Rachel Mosher-Williams

Rachel Mosher-Williams

Rachel Mosher-Williams, joined Community Wealth Partners as the first director of learning and impact. She leads the design and testing of learning and performance measurement systems so the Community Wealth Partners team and our clients and partners better understand what it takes to solve social problems.

Rachel has over 20 years of experience developing program, research and network development strategies for social sector organizations. With a focus on building momentum around systems-changing initiatives supported and championed by philanthropy, her core areas of expertise include performance measurement and evaluation; learning systems and educational product design; quantitative and qualitative research; organizational change strategy; communications; and institutional partnership-building.

She developed her own consulting practice, providing thought leadership, strategy and measurement and evaluation services to clients like the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and Independent Sector. Prior to consulting, she designed research-based programs and advanced thought leadership on philanthropy and social innovation as a vice president at the Council on Foundations and as a director at the Aspen and Urban Institutes.

Rachel is an author and editor of critical volumes on social entrepreneurship and public policy and has served on several nonprofit committees and boards, including the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. Rachel has a MPA, with a concentration in analysis and evaluation, from the George Washington University and a BA with High Honors from the College of William and Mary, where she was a Presidential Scholar.


Emily Neubig

Emily Neubig

Emily Neubig, senior consultant, leads client relationships and engagements, facilitates diverse leadership teams in bold decision making and supports their execution, and contributes to overall strategic firm initiatives. Emily has worked extensively with organizations in the areas of health, education, and youth development. She has experience leading stakeholders through strategy design, business case development, and organizational change management. In addition, Emily has worked with organizational leaders to create cross sector change. She is supporting the Lumina Foundation, higher education institutions, and state stakeholders to design a new business model that will help more adult learners complete their college degrees.

Prior to joining Community Wealth Partners, Emily worked in the strategy practice of Deloitte Consulting, advising federal healthcare leaders on agency-wide strategies to improve operations, reduce costs, and mitigate risk. She partnered with a diverse set of stakeholders to design organizational initiatives with expected savings of over $200M annually. Prior to Deloitte, Emily managed grant programs and identified best practices at the Council of Graduate Schools, and analyzed the business impact of environmental policies at Abt Associates. Emily has a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia, and an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.


Rebecca Ochtera

Rebecca Ochtera

Dr. Ochtera brings over 15 years of experience in public health research, evaluation, and practice to her role as senior researcher at Spark Policy Institute. Her work has primarily focused on the promotion of health and healthcare delivery across a variety of populations and settings, with a focus on equity.

Rebecca has expertise in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research, advanced training in survey design, and experience managing large scale, cross-sector, multi-site research and evaluation projects. Her approach to evaluation helps organizations embrace evaluation by building the capacity of the organization to develop a learning culture, working closely every step of the way, and focusing on meaningful outcomes. She has additional experience using community-based participatory research methods in diverse populations, including persons experiencing homelessness and at-risk youth, and has worked extensively in the fields of substance abuse, mental health, foster care and residential treatment for youth, and early childhood learning.

Prior to joining the Spark team Rebecca worked for a national healthcare organization as manager of health promotion services for the Colorado region, including oversight of health education, health communication, and internal evaluation for population health initiatives. Her prior research focused on supporting behavior change initiatives related to chronic and infectious disease, including promotion of secondary prevention and studying the impact of stigma on prevention behaviors for persons living with HIV, as well as prison populations.

Rebecca holds an MPH and a PhD in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Meggan Parezo

Meggan Parezo

Ms. Parezo is a Senior Project Manager at Spark Policy Institute, where she brings experience in project management, coalition development, stakeholder engagement at the local, state and federal levels, process improvement, healthy eating and active living with an emphasis on healthy equity, and environmental remediation.

Meggan brings experience managing complex, cross-sector change strategies, including serving as Project Lead for the backbone support to collective impact initiatives, including Healthy Schools Colorado, which focuses on improving health outcomes for youth through creating a culture of wellness in public schools. She has led the work necessary to have well-defined roles, responsibilities and staffing for the core team, steering committee, and several workgroups while maintaining constant communication with all stakeholders.

Before joining the Spark team, Meggan worked for a statewide nonprofit and funding organization helping to create healthy eating and active living opportunities for children and their families across Colorado. As a part of this work, she helped implement and foster a local community investment initiative focused on tackling policy change at multiple levels, along with other systemic solutions related to childhood obesity. She managed a network of up to 25 local coalitions, associated grants, and a community advisory board providing direction to the organization's leadership team and board. Prior to that, Meggan worked in the environmental remediation industry overseeing data management, contract compliance, process and program development and resource allocation, as well as performing as a geographic information systems (GIS) specialist.

Meggan holds a BS in Geography from Southern Oregon University.


Nicolette Pizzitola

Nicolette Pizzitola

Nicolette is the founder and CEO of Compass Point, a consultancy that advises individuals developing their leadership and guides organizations building engaging environments where talent thrives. An expert career strategist, Nicolette works with leaders to powerfully understand and meaningfully shape how they show up in their lives and work.

A sought after speaker and motivator known for connecting with audiences and inspiring action, Nicolette has appeared on the TODAY Show and participated in, TEDx. A frequent campus lecturer, Nicolette has developed and taught career strategies at The George Washington University School of Business and served as a consultant for the career center at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She has been a ProInspire advisor and member of the Fellowship faculty since inception.

Partnering with InclusionVentures, Nicolette collaborates on the design and delivery of inclusive strategies and programming for philanthropies, non-profits, corporations, communities and schools.

Before forming Compass Point in 2006, Nicolette worked in communications, business development, and public and investor relations roles with Time Warner, HBO, The City of New York and The National Council for International Health. A native New Yorker, Nicolette resides in Washington, DC.


Claudia Sandoval

Claudia Sandoval

Claudia Sandoval has dedicated her professional life to partnering with innovative organizations to transform the lives of underserved populations. As an experienced strategist with extensive knowledge of and experience working within philanthropy and non-profit sectors, she is highly skilled at developing and implementing public-private partnerships. Her guiding belief is that a quality education is a fundamental right that enables youth to live their adult lives with dignity. Currently, she manages COS Consulting where she leverages her expertise to expand organizations' capacity through a wide range of services, including strategic planning, initiative implementation, strengths-based coaching, and change management.

Claudia has spent a decade working as a Senior Executive for several large family and corporate foundations. In her role, she coached and guided grantees through the grant development process to make a winning case for private investment and to help grantees understand the decision-making processes at family and corporate foundations. She led a partnership between two corporate foundations and a large urban school district to develop of a college and career readiness course that ensures students graduate high school with the skills to make informed decisions about their future. The course launched in 2012 and serves over 4,000 students annually.

Claudia has also held different roles with school districts and nonprofits across the country to design and implement strategic reforms. While a senior administrator at Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Claudia led the design and implementation of the District Health and Wellness Initiative. The Initiative partnered the school district with the Miami-Dade County Health Department and The Children's Trust and created Health Connect in Our Schools (HCiOS), an ambitious program that provides a healthcare team composed of a nurse, social worker, and health aide in 331 schools. HCiOS links every child to a medical home and provides preventative care at school sites.

Claudia holds a Master's of Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a Bachelors of Arts in History and Bachelors of Arts in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Gallup-Certified Strengths coach and a graduate of Coro Eastern Center Fellows Program. Claudia lives in San Francisco, CA.


Alicia Santamaria

Alicia Santamaria

As principal of San Francisco-based adelante coaching + consulting, Alicia's mission is "facilitating people, teams, and organizations forward." A learning and development trainer, coach, facilitator and organizational consultant, Alicia has over 20 years of professional experience in the non-profit, education, government, and philanthropy sectors. Foundational to Alicia's work is her enduring fascination with the social process of communication and how it informs and impacts our identities, relationships, teams, organizations, and communities. As an experienced conflict resolution practitioner, mediator, and group facilitator, Alicia has worked in a multitude of diverse cross-sector settings helping stakeholders improve the quality of their communication and build trust; design respectful and collaborative relationships; bridge differences and find common ground; move from positions-based conflict to interest-based dialogue; and develop effective mechanisms for ensuring action and accountability.

Examples of Alicia's diverse professional experience include: serving as community relations liaison for the City of San Mateo, California, where she improved external communication and collaboration with residents, schools, businesses, the faith-based community, and other government entities; working at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation where she conducted national outreach, expansion efforts, and partnership development for Raising A Reader, a national early literacy program working to build regular parent/child reading routines in the homes of low income and immigrant families; and a consultancy with the Public Dialogue Consortium, dedicated to creating high quality communication in public forums to produce innovative connections and outcomes in neighborhoods and communities. She used this experience for her Master's Thesis focused on the use of public dialogue methods to enhance civic engagement and public discourse on issues of race and culture.

As a faculty member of the CSL Fellows Program, Alicia facilitates experiential learning around strengths development and conflict resolution. She holds a master's degree in interpersonal and intercultural communication from the University of New Mexico and a bachelor's degree in political science from Syracuse University. She is a certified professional coach as accredited by the International Coach Federation and is certified in many assessments and learning tools. Alicia also serves as adjunct faculty at Notre Dame de Namur University's Business School in Belmont, California, where she develops and teaches courses in the areas of leadership and organizational development.


Lisa Spinali

Lisa Spinali

Lisa Spinali is a nationally recognized leader in the field of volunteerism and civic engagement with more than 25 years of cross-sector experience. Lisa served as Executive Director of the San Francisco Education Fund and San Francisco School Volunteers for six years, and during this time she also led the merger between the two organizations. Her prior experience includes leading civic engagement funding for the Omidyar Foundation. Five years prior, Lisa founded Ripple Effect Consulting, working with more than 100 public sector organizations to improve their organizational effectiveness. She also served as lead consultant for the Corporation for National Service's Presidio Leadership Center in San Francisco, designing innovative leadership training programs and providing instruction to more than 300 nonprofit executives.

While working at American Express, Lisa was appointed as an executive-on-loan to the White House, serving on the launch team for President Clinton's national service initiative, AmeriCorps. She currently serves as a Council Member for Reimagining Service, Advisor to the Greenlight Fund and Board Member for SFCASA. Her consulting practice includes clients from across the sectors including the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Council on Foundations, Firelight Foundation, Breast Cancer Fund and the Presidio Institute. In 2007, Lisa was appointed by the Office of the Governor to the board of commissioners for California Volunteers, the state agency for volunteerism and service. During this same period, she was appointed by San Francisco's Mayor to serve on the Citizens Advisory Council for San Francisco's Department of Children, Youth and Families. As a resident of San Francisco, she also currently serves as the President of her neighborhood association. Lisa earned a master's degree in business administration from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree in Italian literature from the University of California, Berkeley.


Paul Thallner

Paul Thallner

Paul Thallner is fascinated with the way leaders' positive behavior impacts business results. He studied leadership and organizational change at the top-ranked Weatherhead School of Management and is currently conducting original research for a book on the value of positive behavior in organizations.

His firm specializes in leadership performance and innovation capacity-building for senior leaders and change agents. By focusing leaders on leveraging their strengths to drive engagement and results, he has built a reputation as an expert in catalyzing positive, sustainable organizational change at scale. He was awarded a FuseCorps fellowship in 2013 to design innovative cross-sector solutions aimed at reducing the high school dropout rate.

Paul is an ICF-certified executive coach whose clients include senior executives from PepsiCo, Cleveland Clinic, Johnson-Matthey, Montefiore Medical Center, Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, GreatMinds Inc., Team Rubicon, Dealer.com, Creative Commons, The Future Project, The Arthur Ashe Institute for Public Health, The Bush Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Corporation for National and Community Service, and more.

Previously, he was a consultant at Teleos Leadership Institute where he led large-scale transformational change projects for clients such as British Petroleum, Viacom, Creative Commons, the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, and others.

He was Managing Principal Consultant for BroadVision's (NASDAQ: BVSN) Worldwide Professional Services group during the internet boom, and a Senior Consultant at K12 Inc (NYSE: LRN) where he opened new markets and generated $25 Million in revenue. He started his career in Washington, DC researching best practices in education and later was appointed by Governor Pete Wilson to lead the development of California's Math and Science standards.

Paul received a M.S. in Positive Organizational Development and Change from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University where he graduated with distinction and was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma management honor society. He also holds a M.A. from the College of New Jersey and a B.A. from Gettysburg College.


Matthew Thomas

Matthew Thomas

Matthew Thomas is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Paddle (http://www.paddlehr.com), a career development platform for cross-sector leaders. Paddle's digital self-assessments and personalized action plans help users become more innovative, adaptable and collaborative. Prior to founding Paddle, Matthew co-founded Prospect Madison, the Presidio Institute Fellows and The Intersector Project, institutions that empower professionals to create public value by engaging and collaborating across the business, government, and non-profit sectors.

Matthew co-published his research on cross-sector leadership with Harvard Business Review ("Triple Strength Leadership"), Oxford University Press ("The Gifts of Breadth"), and Global-is-Asian ("The Tri-Sector Athlete"). He also serves as a David Rockefeller Fellow of the Trilateral Commission, and is a member of the World Economic Forum and Banff Forum communities.

Matthew formerly served as Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and as chairman of Young Diplomats of Canada, Young Canadians in Finance and CanLeads. He has delivered remarks on leadership to audiences at the White House, Corporate Executive Board, Maytree Foundation, and TEDxWesternU.

Prior to dedicating his time to cross-sector leadership development, Matthew was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. There he served clients in the retail, mining, and financial sectors, and contributed to the firm's efforts on Long-Term Capitalism and Canada in the Pacific Century. Matthew started his career as an investment banking analyst with Morgan Stanley and financial sector stability economist with the Department of Finance Canada. He graduated with distinction from the Schulich School of Business at York University.


David Viotti

David Viotti

Dave Viotti is the Founder and CEO of SMALLIFY (smallify.it), a global innovation firm based in Menlo Park, California. Through SMALLIFY, Dave has delivered rapid innovation labs to thousands of innovation leaders in corporate, start-up, government, and non-profit organizations, including the White House, Pfizer, Salesforce.com, Hewlett Packard, PBS, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Stanford University, the State of California, the Cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, and many others. Dave serves on the faculty of the Executive Leadership Program at U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He is a co-founder of the Westly Prize for Young Innovators in California, Fuse Corps, the Civic Accelerator at Points of Light, and the Collaborative Solutions Lab at the Presidio Institute. Dave is a former U.S. Chief Learning Officer and Corporate Counsel at Sun Microsystems and Henry Luce Scholar at the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Dave received his undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown University and a masters in international relations from Oxford University as an Allbritton Scholar.