Women’s Empowerment through Microcredit

Clarity Forum – Harvard Faculty Club – November 26, 2007

Participant Bios

Shawn Jacqueline Bohen

Shawn Jacqueline Bohen is the Director for Strategic Growth and Impact of a US-based social enterprise - Year Up - a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate apprenticeship.   Shawn is deeply interested in solving the puzzle of how human beings can overcome differences in cultures, belief systems, geographies, languages, and economic realities to tackle the most challenging and interesting questions our global society faces. Most of these challenges - social, political, economic, environmental dilemmas - fall between the cracks of our existing knowledge, institutional structures, and sectors. Before coming to Year Up, Shawn served as Assistant Provost and co-architect of the institutions' new central office created to transform Harvard's approach to finding, hiring, developing, promoting and retaining a diverse, world-class faculty. Bohen's embrace of living and working as a fully integrated person has sustained her journey through political organizing, theatre, and academic and nonprofit leadership and management. She is the mother of two children, Henry and Imogen.

Peri Chickering

Peri Chickering, PhD, has thirty years of experience as an educator, consultant, leader, and advisor to leaders in organizations. For years the outdoors was her classroom, and she traveled to many parts of the world offering wilderness based leadership experiences for Outward Bound and Educo. Much of this work was cross cultural and within global contexts where profound transformation was occurring such as South Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Currently she works as a Senior Consultant for Dialogos, an international consulting company. A central theme in all of her work has been facilitating experiences that invite individuals to lead and live from a place of balance, vision, and personal calling.

Susanne R. Cook-Greuter

Susanne R. Cook-Greuter, Ed.D., is an internationally known authority on Mature Adult Development with a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard.  She is a founding member of the Integral Institute and a co-director of the Integral Psychology Center. She leads workshops throughout the world in the Leadership Maturity Framework and its application for coaching individuals, teams and organizations. She is the leader of a management consulting and coaching firm, Cook-Greuter and Associates, LLC. We offer the SCTi-MAP tool to individuals, groups and organizations who value a developmental perspective.  Our group is dedicated to fostering professional excellence and ongoing learning through action inquiry, self-reflection, testing, and coaching.

Helen-Ann Ireland

Born in 1956 in New Milford, Connecticut, I am a fifty-one year old woman who has devoted herself to the study of the developing human being through the vehicle of Waldorf education. In this style of teaching, not only am I called upon to study human development in depth but to examine my own inner, spiritual process. As a Waldorf teacher, I am called upon to look for the universal in the human being as it relates to the unique individuality that each child brings to the world. What is it that makes us truly human and yet uniquely individual at the same time? As I reflect on the world, I wonder how we can empower our youth and help them develop all aspects of themselves, aspects that I have only recently discovered. How do we fill their hearts with hope and excitement for the future despite the seemingly dismal odds? How can we inspire them to take hold of their lives and find ways to serve humanity with all they have to offer?

Rebecca Koeniger-Donohue

Rebecca Koeniger-Donohue, Ph.D., R.N., CS. is Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing at Simmons College in Boston. Rebecca is recognized widely for her breadth and depth of knowledge in the primary care of women. Rebecca's areas of clinical interest include health promotion and prevention, women's health across the lifespan, and evidenced-based complementary therapies. Rebecca's textbook, Women's Health Case Studies, published by Appleton & Lange, is used extensively in the United States and Canada to prepare women's health nurse practitioners for the National Certification Exam. She has worked as an advanced practice nurse while pursuing ongoing educational and research opportunities for over 25 years. She taught undergraduate students at Boston University prior to joining the faculty at Simmons College. She received her PhD from the University of Rhode Island, master's degree from Boston University and BSN from St. Anselm College.

Luz Maria Puente

Luz Ma is a senior consultant with Growing Edge Partners and she is also a founding member of the Institute for Strategic Clarity. She has extensive client experience in the banking, manufacturing and health care industries. Her focus on strategic and organizational development using various systemic and holistic approaches helps her executive clients to better align the organization with its values. Additionally, she designs and delivers development modules that support this alignment throughout the organization. Her clients include Banamex, CARE Latin America, Sensient Colors, Lawrence Boys and Girls Club, Sensient Flavors and the Texas Department of Health. Luz Maria teaches strategic management courses at the Anahuac University in Mexico City and has co-authored several articles on strategic management. Previously, she worked for Banamex, developing the use of futures and options as a risk management tool for export-import companies in Mexico. She also worked in Citibank trading emerging markets debt instruments.

Mary Day Mordecai

Mary Day is a partner in Growing Edge since 1987, has extensive experience coaching CEOs and their executive teams. She has managed long-term organizational transformation projects for many of the company’s key clients. With Ned, she developed the firm’s comprehensive leadership training process, which enables key team skills to be cascaded throughout management ranks. Mary Day has also led multi-year projects with a number of international clients, including Engro Chemical in Pakistan and Intercor (Exxon) in Colombia.  Prior to joining Growing Edge, Mary Day designed and managed executive development training programs for Boston University School of Management. For several years, she was an instructor with Outward Bound, specializing in experiential courses for managers and executives. In addition, Mary Day has significant experience with not-for-profit organizations, both as a trustee and as an organization development consultant.

Kate W. Parrot

Kate is currently working towards her doctorate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her primary research interest, for which she was awarded a three-year National Science Foundation fellowship to attend MIT, is: How can business, government, and civil society collaborate to solve complex global problems? Prior to MIT, Kate was a researcher and consultant with the Commercial and Industrial Services team at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Snowmass, Colorado.  Kate holds a master’s degree in Technology and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a BS in Biology from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She has worked as an environmental consultant for the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); in municipal water resources planning and water quality management for the City of Westminster, Colorado; and as a backcountry researcher and patroller for the State of Alaska.

Anne Starr

Anne manages worldwide business engagements and serves as liaison to China for Peter Senge. Formerly an executive search consultant in emerging high tech; human resources professional in high tech and academia.  MBA, Simmons College.  Current areas of interest: Focusing (nexus between Gendlin’s Focusing, Bohm’s implicate order and Maturana’s Path 2), and adult development.

Jim Ritchie-Dunham

Jim is a managing partner at Growing Edge Partners; he works with senior leaders in corporate, civil society, and government to gain greater clarity about their organization’s strategy.  He specializes in developing and applying analytical tools and processes, founded in the decision, systems and behavioral sciences.   Jim is the founder of the Institute for Strategic Clarity and today he is its chief strategist. In addition, Jim is an associate of the Psychology Department at Harvard University. Previously he was a visiting scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a professor of operations research and decision sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), an advisor to the Mexican Secretary of Health, and a petroleum engineer at Conoco.