Debbie has over a decade of professional experience in negotiation, mediation, and organizational change. She excels at helping organizations implement large-scale change through careful initiative design and has a keen ability to link the business objectives with the people and resources needed to support a change effort. Debbie has led negotiation teams in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, and uses that expertise to design training programs for business leaders and health care professionals. She sees conflict as a starting point for a productive exchange about organizational priorities and performance, and helps teams to build collaborative approaches to their most pressing business challenges.

Debbie helps her clients implement change in highly politicized environments as they manage the multiple pressures of their mission and performance goals, the culture and competencies of their talent base and increasingly competitive markets. Debbie also applies her negotiation skills to help family and owner-led businesses create continuity and succession plans that bridge the interests of the family, the business, and the owners. She understands the importance of involving all the appropriate players in the process of generating options, making decisions, and committing to a plan so that they “own” the solution.

Her clients include owner-led and family businesses, academic medical centers, foundations, and hospital systems.

Skills/Knowledge/Abilities

• Executive Coaching - Consults one on one with leaders facing critical decisions
• Strategy with Top Teams - Works with leaders and their teams to set and implement direction
• Financial Analysis - Teases out the story implied by the balance sheet, income statement and other financials

Recent Projects

• For an academic medical center: Led the negotiation and implementation of a new governance structure following a merger with a private hospital system.
• For $1-Billion Foundation: Consulted to the founder of a strategic consulting unit created to help human services agencies implement practice reform and large-scale change. Supported the development of a practice model, created an organizational structure to support high performing consulting teams, led professional development programs on consulting practice.
• For a six-hospital health system: Worked with the senior leadership team to manage initiative overload and create a method for implementing a patient safety strategy across multiple hospitals.
• For an owner-led business: Led a succession strategy process to determine the future ownership structure for the business.

Professional Facts

Master's of Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University

Co-leader of CFAR’s Negotiation and Collaboration focus area

Member of CFAR’s Telling the Strategy Story focus area and owner-led business practice

Managed a New York State Court funded mediation program in New York City

Selected Writing & Speaking

"Tools for Effective Transitions in Large Group Events.” (with T. Gilmore) Bunker and Alban, Large Group Methods: For Community and Organizational Change. Jossey-Bass (forthcoming, 2006).

“Negotiating in Family Businesses: When Relationships and Outcomes both Matter.” Presentation at the Annual Symposium of the Family Firm Institute, Chicago, October 2005.

"When Ethnic Tension Jeopardizes Environmental Management: A Collaborative, Regional Approach to Management."  International Environmental Negotiation, Vol. 8, Program on Negotiation: Harvard University, 1999.

"Guide to Current Resources in Co-existence Work."
Handbook on Inter-ethnic Coexistence, The Abraham Fund, 1998.