About: The Long Version

I started as a classroom teacher, and quickly fell in love with the process of helping people learn things, particularly about themselves, that they didn’t already know. Initially ignited when I taught English while studying abroad in Japan during college, that passion has been a red thread through all my work. 

I taught high school after college, but grew claustrophobic in the classroom. Fortunately, I found outdoor education. For 10 years I worked as an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), guiding students through the mountains of Wyoming, Alaska, Washington and Chile. I taught backpacking, mountaineering skills, expedition behavior and leadership to build students’ self-sufficiency for their NOLS expedition and beyond. My favorite moments were when my co-instructors and I turned over our NOLS course to the students to run. Overall this work was, in essence: take a group of individuals on a wilderness journey, help them articulate their goals, and then ensure they have the wilderness skills, expedition behavior and leadership capabilities needed to accomplish their goals in the backcountry. 

Between NOLS expeditions I worked as a ski instructor at Jackson Hole, WY, and as a naturalist in the Marin Headlands near San Francisco. In both cases I continued to learn about how people interact in groups. I snuck in an M.Ed. degree (curriculum design and teaching), thinking I might return to the classroom. (Spoiler alert: didn’t happen.) It was an interesting decade, and I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.

When I grew weary of sleeping on the ground 30 weeks of the year I was lucky to discover organization development, which had instant appeal since it requires, in essence: take a group of individuals in an organizational setting, help them articulate their goals, and then ensure they have the skills, team dynamics and leadership behaviors needed to accomplish their goals in that organizational setting. 

When I left the backcountry I was fortunate to find a small consulting firm with amazing mentors willing to help me transfer my skills to organizations. I traveled around the country and the world gaining training and consulting experience in many industries and settings. It was a valuable induction into corporate training and development, and organization development consulting. 

Eventually the novelty of business travel wore off and I transferred the consulting skills I’d learned to an inside-the-organization setting. I’ve held roles in two academic medical centers (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) and at Gilead Sciences, a global biotech company. In these roles I learned the ins and outs of managing clients, building employee and leadership development programs with durable legacy, and how to tie team initiatives to organizational culture and strategy. The experiences have been invaluable, and the leaders I’ve worked with have taught me invaluable lessons about the day-to-day stresses of managing team dynamics and interpersonal issues in an organizational setting. In addition, the complexity of these organizations and the diversity of both intra- and inter-team dynamics has given me tremendous experience to draw from as I think about team effectiveness.

In January 2022 I started Teewinot Consulting to focus my services on team and leader development, my passions. I chose “Teewinot” as a name for my practice not only because it is a favorite peak of mine, but also because it is situated within the central Teton Range and also set apart from the central peaks so it offers unique perspective on the rest of the Tetons. This is what I intend to do. I like to think that I do good work with good people and make good impact by bringing the whole of my experience on the work I do. Through my facilitation and consulting I want to work where I feel I can offer the most value and help my clients see the greatest results.