Personal Background
Educational Background
Professional Background
 

Personal Background
I was born in New York City on April 5th, 1953. My father was a lawyer and my mother a school social worker. I was an introverted, achievement oriented kid. I had a great comic book collection (Spiderman was my favorite) and learned to do pottery at summer camp. In college my interests expanded. I became part of a group that put on rock concerts. We had a major riot after Deep Purple refused to go on-stage at Cornell's football stadium and lost our insurance. I got a job working at a Texaco station, but still had lots of free time on my hands. A friend who was part of a counseling center had been telling me I was easy to talk to, and that I should join, so I did. I guess if it wasn't for the riot I might never have shifted into this career. Go figure. It shows you can't get too attached to the belief that you're in active control of your life.

When I was younger I was terribly out of shape and considerably overweight. In high school my lunch was two pints of milk and two pieces of cake (sometimes chocolate, sometimes vanilla - I liked variety). I think I put my dentist's kids through college. Later in life I became actively involved in exercise, mostly running and weight lifting, and adopted a much healthier diet. I'm enormously proud of having run the New York City Marathon in November, 1998. 

The major quest of my life has been personal and professional development. I wanted to understand myself and others. What motivates us? What is the source of happiness, inner peace, contentment? How do we make ourselves miserable? How do we get in our way? My journey took me all over the place. I explored traditional and nontraditional, eastern and western sources of potential wisdom. At one point I was quite successful in accepted societal ways. I was highly respected in my field, an adjunct professor, interviewed on radio and television, and so on, yet I still wasn't happy. Something about my life was not deeply fulfilling, and I was determined to understand why. So I left that career, worked construction and drove a bus, and took time to explore who we are at a deeper level. It's extremely important to me, in my work, that everything I share comes from direct knowledge and wisdom distilled from personal experience, rather than from some theory or belief.

I currently live in Boulder, Colorado with my partner Sandra and my dog Krishna. He's my role model. He's open hearted and playful. When it's time to rest, he's absolutely at rest. When it's time to be active, he's fully engaged and alert. He reminds me of the importance of the simple things in life. Click on his name to see his picture and life story. You'll be glad you met him.

Sandra and I were introduced by a mutual friend. She invited us over to dinner and we liked each other. That was in 1994 and we've been together ever since. Another example of how the best gifts generally aren't things that we plan out. We continually discover how relationships reflect where we truly are in each moment. Relationships are a struggle when we believe that we are our personalities, when we take our thoughts and feelings seriously, when we try to protect or control. On the other hand, Sandra and I continually discover how beautiful a relationship can be when we're taking ourselves lightly and welcoming each moment with a tender openness, when our minds are still and our hearts open, when we're present and vulnerable, when we're surrendering to what we know to be true.

Educational Background
I entered Cornell University as a mathematics and chemistry major, and ended up majoring in abstract math and philosophy "with distinction in all subjects." I can't say I remember much about either field. I look at it like weight training for the brain. You lift weights to build up muscles, not to remember what the weights looked like. Then I became involved in counseling (see Personal Background) and worked in that field after graduation (see Professional Background). 

I realized that I was at a dead end as an Assistant Director of a residential facility with those two bachelors degrees, and applied to graduate schools. I'd been looking at a newspaper article listing the top ten cities in each of three size categories, and arbitrarily decided to explore the graduate programs in those cities. Graduate programs would look very favorably at my work experience, grade point average and graduate school admission tests results, and then ask what psychology courses I had completed. They didn't know what to do with me when I told them I had never had a psychology course in my life. I ended up at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh, learning a lot about psychology (it was actually an excellent program) while wondering how Oshkosh ever got into the top ten list of small cities. After receiving a masters degree in clinical psychology I completed my doctorate at George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. My graduate work included a major interest area of management, leadership, organizational behavior, and systems theory. I continued on to an internship at the University of Alabama Medical School in Birmingham, Alabama.

Since that time I have completed trainings and certifications in a host of different areas. I won't bore you with the list. It's a long one. I also learned the limitations of "techniques," because ultimately your effectiveness is determined by who you are and what you know, rather than what credentials you have accumulated.

Professional Background
I started out as a volunteer at a short-term and crisis counseling center. My first professional job was in 1974 as a counselor at a residential treatment center. After a couple of years I went to graduate school, completing my doctorate and internship. As I moved through various positions over the years I gained expertise in systems intervention and received advanced training in a number of areas. I worked as Center Director for a managed mental health company, running two offices with multiple responsibilities including clinical and administrative supervision of all staff, management of external/internal systems, quality assurance, utilization review, personnel, and budgetary compliance. 

Movement into organizational consulting brought together my experience working with individuals, groups, and systems. Individually and with my partner Sandra Hill I have worked with large and small, for-profit and non-profit organizations. My expertise in executive and personal coaching was a natural outgrowth of my extensive background working first with individuals and later with systems and organizations.  Our organizational consulting work has included:

• facilitation of meetings
• helping to establish organizational cultures that truly support teams
• facilitating the development of individual teams
• assisting with mergers and other times of transition (e.g. changes in top management)
• mediating relationships and/or issues within and across locations
• increasing healthy and effective communication, including making better use of meetings
• providing executive/leadership coaching
• bringing more depth and meaning to the work experience
• clarifying and evolving formal and informal reward systems
• developing the skills necessary to allow organizations to flourish

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Personal Background
Educational Background
Professional Background