Consulting Staff

Debbie Bing, Principal, is a co-leader of the Negotiation and Collaboration focus area and an expert in negotiation, mediation, and organizational change. She excels at helping organizations implement change through careful initiative design and a keen focus on building the engagement and buy-in of multiple stakeholders. She works extensively in family and owner-led businesses, health care, foundations, and academic medical centers. Debbie holds a Master's of International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.   Learn More >>

 

Jason Conroy, Associate, recently joined CFAR upon completion of a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. He has a Master’s Certificate in International Studies from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Jason has public sector experience with the U.S. Department of State in Quebec City and U.S. Department of the Treasury—Office of International Affairs in Washington D.C.  Utilizing his analytical skills and international perspective, Jason enjoys addressing the challenges associated with strategy and organizational change. He has worked as a visa officer at the French Consulate in Boston,  and as a high school English teacher in Bordeaux, France.

Nancy Drozdow, Principal, is a CFAR founder and has, for more than 20 years, directed the firm's work with owner-led businesses, both public and private. She is also one of the founders of the Family Firm Institute. Nancy is an expert in business strategy — merging rigorous analytics with human and organizational dynamics to invent business solutions that stick-particularly around leadership transitions. She helps firms plan for the future, with effective ownership, capital, strategy and leadership structures and processes that energize and inspire.      Learn More >>

 

Barry Dornfeld, Senior  Manager, has consulted in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, focusing on organizational change, organizational communication, and strategic planning. As a member of CFAR's Campaign Approach to Change focus area, Barry draws on his background as a media ethnographer and qualitative researcher; he is also a documentary filmmaker. His clients, including many family and owner-led businesses, benefit from his work in public broadcasting, cultural performance, and academic administration, which he uses to craft effective communication approaches in the face of change. Barry holds a Ph.D. in Communications from the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania.     Learn More >>

 

Jessica Geiben Lynn, Senior Manager, is a member of the Negotiation team, highlighting differences and conflict within teams, believing that conflicts hold vital organizational information. Conflict in organizations should be more than managed-it should be harnessed. She works with clients to turn conflict into information, and information into strategy.   Learn More >>

 

Tom Gilmore, Vice President, consults to significant changes in complex organizations, often in connection with leadership transitions. He has written extensively, often with clients, on issues of leadership, large group engagement processes, reorganizations, downsizing and team building. Tom is an adjunct associate professor at the Wharton School in Health Care Systems, and is a founder of ISPSO (International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations) serving on its board for three years.  
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Monica Heuer, Associate, recently joined CFAR after completing her MBA in Organizational Strategy and Marketing from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked as a consultant primarily in the nonprofit sector and has extensive experience designing and delivering executive programs. Monica’s background in Sociology and program evaluation uses a participatory approach to consulting engagements.  She focuses on building clients’ skills in an engagement to ensure sustainable change. Monica has a Master’s of Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University.

 

Matthew Hill, Associate, came to CFAR in 2008 after completing his doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. He brings experience working as a management consultant focused on organizational change, business strategy and innovation. As an applied anthropologist, Matthew has leveraged the insights of ethnographic research to help Fortune 500 companies develop new products, services, and business models. He has worked across a variety of industry sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals and healthcare. In the non-profit sector, Matthew has conducted research on the impacts of globalization and economic restructuring on cities in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as Chicago and Philadelphia. He is a former dissertation fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and lectures in the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Larry Hirschhorn, Principal, uses his expertise in economics, mathematics and psychology to help leaders balance quantitative and qualitative data in the decision-making process. He works collaboratively with clients to help them campaign for change and manage for performance. Larry tackles complex situations in a grounded and practical way, and has written extensively on the post-industrial organization.     Learn More >>

 

Michellana Jester, Associate, has expertise in leadership and organizational development. She assists clients to build team alliances across potentially competing organizational values, and to create actionable plans that cause minimal organizational strife. Her background includes co-founding a leadership training consulting practice as well as working at Harvard's Center for Public Leadership where she focused on translating urban school district superintendents' leadership skills into academic achievement for their school district.    Learn More >>

 

Nathalie Manevich, Associate, joined CFAR after completing an MBA in Multinational Management and a Master of Arts in International Studies from The Wharton School and The Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to Wharton and Penn, she worked for two multinational corporations in consumer products and in media and entertainment, in corporate finance, strategy, and tax. Nathalie speaks six languages and has worked for the French government and throughout Latin America as well as with two NGOs represented at the United Nations. Throughout her career, Nathalie has combined her business skills with those in languages and inter-cultural relations. At CFAR, she enjoys focusing on strategy and collaboration within family and owner-led businesses.

Linda May, Principal, helps clients work through messy, complicated change efforts. She is a leader of CFAR's IT Strategy and the Campaign Approach to Change focus areas, and has consulted to a wide variety of healthcare, foundation and corporate clients. She is adept in settings where people feel overwhelmed and knows how to find the natural rhythms and drivers at an organization. Linda holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Mario Moussa, Principal, has a knack for framing complex situations in ways that lend themselves to manageable solutions. Drawing on lessons learned from ten years of teaching executives at Wharton, he applies the best current thinking to problems of strategy, organizational design and change, and corporate culture. His clients include many of the country's major corporations and not-for-profit institutions.
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Mal O'Connor, Vice President, helps executives and their teams think and act strategically. For more than 15 years, he has honed his skills in many industries, from health care, insurance and financial services, to human services and foundations. With a Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, Mal has applied his ethnographic skills to the development of an innovative approach to strategy execution, the Campaign Approach to Change. Using this approach, leaders can tap, amplify and harness human and technical strengths throughout the organization to improve system-wide performance.     Learn More >>

 

Lynn Oppenheim, President, was one of the founders of the firm when it spun off from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has more than 20 years of experience in consulting across a range of issues and clients. Her recent work has focused on life sciences organizations and academic medical centers whose need to respond to high demands for capital investment in a dynamic environment is often at odds with their historic pace of decisions and the need for participative governance. Lynn holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin.
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Barton Parrott, Senior Manager, joined CFAR full-time in 2003 and has more than ten years of experience as a consultant focusing on strategy and organizational change. His background includes two years of medical school and numerous consulting projects in academic medical centers. He has a solid grounding in the scientific and clinical issues in health care today. Bart holds an MBA in Health Care Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.      Learn More >>

 

Arthur Rogers, Senior Manager,  brings experience in consulting to hospitals and health plans  in strategy, innovation, and building work environments where teams can be extremely creative and productive.  He has also worked in the IT world where he helped design a new organizational structure to tackle the transition from a manufacturing and assembly environment to a services model. Arthur is a member of the US Army National Guard, serving as a health care specialist.  Arthur brings his skills to CFAR’s strategy focus area, as well as our health and hospital systems specialty. He holds an MBA from Baylor University, an MILR degree focusing on Collective Bargaining from the school of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, and an MPH degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

 

Kelvin Schleif, Associate, recently joined CFAR after completing his MBA from Babson College. His background includes co-founding a mobile applications company, working for a large aerospace and defense contractor and providing strategic consulting services for a division of the Boston Children’s hospital. Kelvin uses his analytical skills and varied work experiences in combination with his interest in strategy and entrepreneurship to effectively analyze and solve complex organizational issues.

Chatham Sullivan, Senior Manager, joined CFAR in 2004. He combines his training in management, ethnographic research and individual and organizational psychology in working with business leaders. His approach helps leaders identify the critical connections between strategic and operational performance and the sociology of the business. By helping leaders make these connections, they find new ways to tackle the problems and opportunities that are critical to the vitality of their organizations.      Learn More >>

 

Jennifer Tomasik, Principal, helps her clients solve complex strategic and organizational challenges. Her approach to consulting emphasizes communication and collaboration, supported by a blend of quantitative and qualitative analytics. Jennifer has worked in the health care sector since 1994, and has a Master's in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a founding member of two CFAR focus areas, Negotiation and Telling the Strategy Story and is a co-leader of CFAR's Health Care practice. She has lived on three continents, and is both an avid traveler and aspiring golfer. 
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Nathaniel Welch, Senior Manager, helps clients solve complex strategic and organizational issues and generate sustainable value. Nat’s approach is collaborative and contextual, blending his experience in knowledge management, social network analysis, alliance management, and business development. He believes that by understanding how to support and leverage the “knowledge worker” in today’s global enterprises, organizations can create meaningful work, engaged employees, and happy clients. Nat is a member of the CFAR Collaborations group, an active member of the Network Round Table at the University of Virginia, a Fellow with the Learning Innovations Laboratory at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and also holds an MBA from Harvard.
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Analysts

Caroline Bogucki, Analyst, joined CFAR after working in London for a year in the financial industry for an international bank. She graduated from Barnard College in 2004 with a degree in Economics and incorporated her love of travel into her senior thesis on the expansion of budget airlines in Europe. She enjoys applying her strong analytic skills to her work at CFAR.

 

Kern Chen, Analyst, joined CFAR after working in the technology sector for a year. He graduated from Harvard University in 2005 with a Bachelor's degree in Economics. Kern is interested in how firms make strategic decisions and, more importantly, how these decisions can be implemented successfully.

 

Jennifer Feinberg, Analyst, recently graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Politics and Women's Studies. Throughout her undergraduate education, Jenny worked for a number of politicians, most notably in a mayoral office in a world capital as well as internships with United States Senators. At CFAR, Jenny applies her experience from the political sphere to help organizations improve their interactions and better execute their goals.

 

Sarah Frayne, Analyst, recently graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in History and Anthropology. She enjoys the challenges of understanding how culture within an organization influences its performance. Sarah enjoys working with mission driven organizations and is interested in the particular challenges that confront them.

Jeremy Kurtz, Analyst, graduated from Brandeis University in 2006 with a degree in Economics. After working for a healthcare business solutions company for a year, he joined CFAR where he explores his interest in how group dynamics within organizations affect decision-making and change initiatives.

 

Eugene Lee, Analyst, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 where he majored in international relations and minored in Anthropology. Finding himself at CFAR nearly a year later, he thankfully found use for his multi-disciplinary background. Eugene is fascinated by forward-looking global projects that seek ways for organizations to connect themselves to the flattening world. As transnational boundaries diminish, how will organizations, continuously unencumbered by geography, take advantage of these opportunities and how will they address the accompanying challenges?

Alex Libson, Analyst, recently graduated from Davidson College with a degree in Psychology. After working with a start-up non-profit durring the summers of ’05 and ’06, he developed an interest in the way organizations and their goals can develop and transform over time. Alex utilizes these and other interests in his work at CFAR.

Aaron Meyerson, Analyst, graduated from Syracuse University where he majored in Anthropology and minored in Science, Technology and Society. Aaron has an interest in the dynamics of various social issues and how the involved parties may view a particular topic differently. Being able to differentiate between ‘an opinion of’ vs. ‘a solution to’ is crucial to accomplishing a specified goal. Aaron uses this objective analysis in his work at CFAR.

 

Polly Mygatt, Analyst, recently graduated from Yale University with a double major in American Studies and International Studies. She enjoys thinking about how to facilitate communication across potential barriers. Polly’s work at CFAR gives her the opportunity to combine her interests in group dynamics, strategy, and conflict resolution.

 

 

Support Staff

Cathy Brundage, External Relations Coordinator, has been with CFAR for more than 20 years, moving with the firm from its start at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School through its becoming a private firm. Cathy's role focuses on client and alumni relations at CFAR.

 

Mario Fontana, Communications Assistant and Office Manager, both oversees day-to-day operations in the Cambridge office and provides editorial support to CFAR’s consulting staff. He graduated from Ithaca College in 2004 with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and is enrolled in the Master’s program in Leadership at Northeastern University. Before joining CFAR, Mario was an associate editor at Retail Systems Alert Group in Newton, MA and has done freelance work for the Burlington Free Press and Varsity New England Magazine. In his free time he works to help spinal cord injury victims through the Travis Roy Foundation in Boston. 

 

Nicole D. Fousheé, Accountant, works with the accounting department handling accounts receivable and accounts payable. She holds a Bachelor's in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting from Drexel University.

 

Andrew Holowka, Senior IT Specialist, maintains the CFAR desktop computing platforms and network health. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in English with a concentration in Technical Writing from the University of Delaware.  Before coming to CFAR, Andrew worked as the IT Manager for a global, bulk gas manufacturer and distributor.

 

Mary Kelly, Controller, has worked at CFAR since 1992. Mary manages the daily financial systems at CFAR and is responsible for CFAR's employee benefits. She has recently led CFAR's implementation of an integrated online management tool, enabling CFAR to manage relationships both internally and externally. Mary has also served as pro-bono accountant for the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO). She has a Bachelor's in Business Administration from Widener University and has recently passed her CPA exam.

 

Karen Sandlin Silverman, Manager, Library Services, brings her library management and technology experience to CFAR's knowledge management initiative. She has managed various types of libraries, from a professional association to an elementary school. She has held numerous leadership positions in the Special Libraries Association, presented at national library association conferences, and serves on the Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship editorial board. Recent project work includes helping a foundation library evaluate and refocus its priorities. Karen earned her Master's in Library and Information Science from Drexel.

 

Jamie Leigh Sims, Communications Coordinator, manages the editorial process at CFAR. She collaborates with staff and clients to bring their ideas to life. Jamie earned a Bachelor's in Journalism from Ball State University in graphics and visual editing. Her artistic and writing skills enhance the communication of complicated ideas and projects. Before coming to CFAR, Jamie worked as a freelance designer, editor and assistant to nationally known illustrators and photographers and as a Web designer.

 

Katharine Watts, Chief Marketing Officer and a member of the firm’s Management Committee. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the professional services industry and has won several awards for her work from the Society for Marketing Professional Services. She has worked for private firms and as a freelance writer and marketing consultant. She is an affiliate member of the Boston Society of Architects and a Trustee of the St. Botolph Club Foundation. She graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa, and from Oberlin Conservatory with a Bachelor of Music in piano performance.