Sheila Heen specializes in particularly challenging conversations, where emotions run high and relationships are frayed. She offers the insight and skills to tackle the conversations and conflicts that leaders face every day.

She is a 20-year member of the world-renowned Harvard Negotiation Project, a Harvard faculty member and co-author of two New York Times best sellers.

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most is used by leaders all over the world and has even been loaded onto the International Space Station to help astronauts collaborate effectively in that high-stakes, high-pressure environment. Named one of 50 psychology classics alongside Freud and Jung, Difficult Conversations was also named by Penguin as one of the most important books it has ever published.

In the revolutionary Thanks for the Feedback, Sheila brings a fresh perspective to our universal struggles with feedback in every organization by recognizing that in any exchange between giver and receiver, it’s the receiver who is in charge. It’s the receiver who decides what to let in, how to make sense of it, and whether and how to choose to change. The key to accelerating your own learning, as well as the culture of feedback on your team, is understanding the universal challenges of receiving feedback well. From examining our conflicted relationship with feedback, to identifying the triggers that create defensiveness and denial, Sheila’s highly interactive sessions bring insight, practical tools and concrete skills for transforming your own relationship with feedback.

A sought-after commentator and writer, her articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, O, The Oprah Magazine, the New York Times, Fortune and Real Simple. She has been featured on NPR and FOX News, Wharton Leadership Radio, CNBC’s Power Lunch and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her corporate clients span six continents and a dozen industries, including banking, defense, consumer goods, mining, insurance, IT, pharma and biotech, education and media/entertainment. In the public sector, she has provided training for the New England Organ Bank, the Singapore Supreme Court, Greek and Turkish Cypriots grappling with the conflict that divides their island, and theologians struggling with disagreement over the nature of truth and God.

Sheila is a graduate of Occidental College and Harvard Law School. She is schooled in negotiation daily by her three children. 

Pandit Dasa is a Mindful Leadership Expert. He has spoken on Mindfulness and conducted workshops at Google, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Nationwide, Intel, Novartis, The World Bank, UNICEF, Harvard and many other institutions. He has also presented at the World Government Summit in Dubai, the national SHRM convention, Oracle HCM conference, and WorkHuman. Through these workshops, Pandit helps individuals develop positive leadership qualities, lower stress and anxiety, increase focus and productivity, and boost emotional intelligence. Pandit has spoken at a TEDx conference and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, PBS, NPR, The New York Times and Inc.   

Andy Boynton is dean of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, one of the world’s leading business schools, the author of several books and co-creator of DeepDive™, the world’s leading methodology for helping executives harness the power of teams to significantly improve problem-solving speed, innovation and results.

Prior to joining Boston College, Boynton was a professor of strategy at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland for 10 years. At the IMD he led a faculty team and was program director of one of the world’s top ten Executive MBA programs, as recognized by BusinessWeek.

Boynton has recently launched new research projects to explore how distinguished experts from a variety of knowledge-domains work with ideas to achieve professional success and improve their effectiveness in social networks. His latest book, The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen (Jossey-Bass), is based on this research and is co-authored with Bill Fischer and William Bole.

He has also published extensively on factors underlying high-performing teams across a variety of disciplines, including art, science, exploration and design. His previous books include Virtuoso Teams: Lessons from Teams That Changed Their Worlds (Financial Times-Prentice Hall) and Invented Here: Maximizing Your Organization’s Internal Growth and Profitability (Harvard Business School Press).

He is a 1978 graduate of Boston College. Boynton earned his MBA and PhD at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has served on the MBA faculty at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business and at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia.

In addition to his publishing career and role as dean of the Carroll School of Management, Boynton has over twenty years of experience speaking and designing powerful executive education sessions and seminars for firms around the world. He is often utilized by organizations looking to build more innovative and effective teams and his articles in this area have appeared in elite management journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and The California Management Review.

Rosie is an accomplished speaker, writer and consultant. She has spent more than 20 years in worksite health promotion and organizational development. In addition to her bachelor’s degrees in Kinesiology and Public Health, and a doctorate in Organization and Management, Rosie is also a Certified Intrinsic Coach® Mentor, Certified Judgment Index Consultant, a Certified Valuations Specialist, and a Board Certified Coach. Rosie uses this unique combination to work with executive and leadership teams to create comprehensive development strategies centered on shifting thinking patterns. She is a contributing author to the book, “Organization Development in Healthcare — High Impact Practices for a Complex and Changing Environment.” She leverages these principles to help organizations develop and implement strategies to create a thriving workplace culture that values and supports wellbeing and the unique, intrinsic needs of employees.

Kelly R. Wenzel is the Vice President of Business Development at OptTek Systems, Inc. As VP of Business Development, Kelly brings solutions to current and prospective clients for their workforce planning needs. Prior to joining OptTek, Kelly was Director of Human Resources for FreeWave Technologies. Her additional experience includes serving as Regional Sr. HR Manager for Animal Health International and Director of Communications for SeatonHill, working with multiple clients including Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, PepsiCo, Entech Solar, QVL Pharmacy and Trend Micro. Kelly holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of North Texas and an MBA in International Business from Texas Christian University. She also achieved both her SPHR and SHMR-SCP and was a court appointed mediator for the state of Texas.

Sara Shinneman is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources, with 17 years of experience in human resources, including working at Hewitt Associates (now Aon Hewitt) and Frito-Lay. Sara is a graduate of Leadership Plano, Texas and Leadership Pipeline, Texas. In 2008, she was awarded the President's Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing over 4,000 volunteer service hours. Sara was recently nominated for the Great Women of Texas Award for her professional and civic leadership. Sara holds a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin.