Michael Cherry is President of Cherry and Associates. He is an executive coach with experience assisting organizations and individuals in achieving strategic, business objectives through leadership development and performance management. He is versed in team development, strategic planning, Not-for-Profit management, merger and acquisitions and job transition coaching. He has know-how in training design and delivery, human resources management, group and individual facilitation, program and instructional design/development and change management. He has coached both domestic and international clients.

In addition to his coaching work, Mike is a faculty member of the College of Business at Lewis University and serves as Academic Coordinator of Adult Business Programs. He teaches Business Communication and Organizational Development to both undergraduate and graduate students. As Academic Coordinator he is responsible for the overall character, content and quality of the University’s Accelerated Business Programs.

Key Career Accomplishments

• Created and implemented customized, leadership coaching/development programs and supporting documentation and tools for more than 10 client organizations.
• Developed 360-degree competency models and facilitated competency-based performance management and leadership improvement programs.
• Conducted benchmarking studies of coaching practices used to facilitate leadership readiness initiatives.
• Participated in designing and implementing successful cultural and “best practices” integration programs for mergers and acquisitions.
• Spearheaded the development of new product offerings to comply with legislative boundaries.
• Developed and implemented screening, selection, orientation and performance assessment programs.
• Conducted national, client satisfaction surveys.
• Designed and implemented values-based leadership programs to address organizational goals/direction.

Education

• MSA, Not-for-Profit Management, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
• MBA, Leadership & Organizational Change, San José State University, San Jose, California
• BSC, Business Administration, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California

Clients have included

Laurie Coe brings over twenty years of experience in leadership/team development, executive coaching, and sales performance training/development to her work with ExecutivEdge of Silicon Valley clients. She ensures that her clients implement the right strategies to meet their goals. Laurie has worked with a diverse portfolio of clients, including Align Technology, Apple, Applied Biosystems, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Cisco Systems, Fidelity, Genentech, Google, Johnson and Johnson, Hewlett Packard, Pfizer, Sirius Satellite, Sony Pictures, Sun Microsystems, 2Wire and Wachovia Bank.

Prior to her consulting practice, Laurie worked at LifeScan, a Johnson and Johnson company. For twelve years she led teams that designed and implemented employee, organizational, leadership and sales development programs. While there, she led a team that created the vision, plan and execution strategy for a Telesales department, resulting in over ten million dollars in sales its first year. Prior to LifeScan, Laurie worked at US Sprint, training and developing their US sales force during a period of great change in telecommunications. Her extensive management experience in sales and human resources gives her the ability to understand clients' needs and achieve the most significant business outcomes together.

Laurie volunteers in the California public school system, bringing her expertise in transformational leadership to schools, administrations and the foundations supporting them. Governor Schwarzenegger, in recognizing outstanding performance, awarded The California Distinguished School Award to two of the schools she worked with in 2007 and 2008.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Laurie has a BS in Psychology. She is certified in a variety of assessment tools including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Lominger 360 Feedback. She is a member of the Duke CE faculty,

Joan Dauria has over twenty years of human resources management experience in the media, internet, technology and financial services industries.  Originally from the east coast, Joan worked in New York City at Paramount Pictures and then spent fourteen years in various human resources leadership positions at TimeInc, culminating as a Group Director for Time Magazine, the consumer marketing division and the People Weekly franchise. Time Inc is the world’s largest magazine publisher and a division of Time Warner.

She relocated to the Bay Area to join the new management team at ZDNet as Vice President, Human Resources where she established the function.  After ZDNet was acquired by CNET Networks, she became the Vice President, Human Resources for the CNET Media Group. In 2002 she joined LookSmart LTD, an internet search company as Vice President of Human Resources.  Most recently Joan was the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Visa USA. In each role she had responsibility for all human resources disciplines both domestically and internationally.

Joan demonstrates effective leadership, organizational, problem solving and interpersonal skills. She leverages her strong background and experience with early stage companies as well as Fortune 100 corporations. She acts as a coach, facilitator and change agent in working with individuals to leverage their style and vision to achieve results.

Joan is a member of the Human Resources Committee of the Girl Scouts of the Bay Area, a Guide Dogs for the Blind volunteer, serves on the advisory board of the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business HR Leadership Program and she is a coach/mentor for Women Unlimited.

Joan is a graduate of Rhode Island College with a dual major in Education and Psychology. She is qualified in the use and interpretation of a variety of assessment tools including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Personality Dimensions.

Social Psychologist
Leadership Consulting

Biographical:
Shaye has 15 years of experience working with leading edge start ups, Global Corporations, and privately held companies. She is an adjunct Professor in the College of Business, MBA program at San Jose State University, California where she teaches courses in Leadership, Managerial Communication and Organization Behavior. She and her graduate students are currently conducting corporate sponsored research on how to improve the way change is communicated in organizations. Her expertise as a Leadership Consultant focuses on helping executives and their teams influence for results, develop communication and decision making competencies, and focus their attention where it counts. She has worked with CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs that need to be more confident and decisive when in the “hot seat”; attorneys that need to develop more persuasive opening and closing arguments; and teams that must work together productively for the success of the organization.

Shaye grew up in the Detroit area and started her career consulting with auto companies and their unions. She has lived in Silicon Valley for the past nine years and works with some of the leading technology, internet, and professional services organizations. Shaye has a Ph.D. in Organizational Communication with an emphasis in Social Psychology from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.

Areas of Expertise:

• Strategic communication
• Influence
• Decision making and critical thinking
• Team and interpersonal problem solving
• Skill development for communication competencies
• Social science based research and needs assessment
• Speech writing
• Change management
• Organizational development

Shaye has created numerous developmental programs and facilitation models that get breakthrough results with executives and their teams.

Representative Clients:
Sun Microsystems, Intuit, Hewlett-Packard, Westpak, InSilicon, Tarlton Properties, Inc. Salary.com, Laurus Consulting, Rapt Technologies, GAP, Yahoo, Applied Materials, United Defense, Solano County Health and Social Services, Icarian, Open Wave, Silicon Graphics (SGI), Microsoft, and Wyse Technologies.

Current clients include:
Hewlett-Packard, Sun Micro Systems, GMAC, CNET, Palm Source, BEA, Westpak, San Jose State University, and Roche Diagnostics

Meg Ellis, an ExecutivEdge of Silicon Valley associate, is a reformed mainframe programmer, information systems analyst, and computer salesperson. Meg is also a leadership consultant, facilitator, and a qualifying trainer for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. She coaches corporate personnel at all levels using a combination of assessments, listening, skillful questioning, and knowledge of best practices and personality type.

Meg promotes honest dialogue for breakthrough learning, identifying and enhancing individual strengths, and facilitating groups for problem solving. All of this is designed to achieve business and personal objectives.

Her clients have included Apple, Blue Shield of California, Cadence, Chase Manhattan, Chevron, Citibank, Excite, GE Captial companies, Greenlight.com, Hertz, Morgan Stanley, Mobil Oil, Pepsi, Proxicom, Oracle, Robert Mondavi Winery and Sun.

She has a BS in mathematics, and a MA in psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and extensive training with Newfield Network in coaching.

Ann Marie Lei is a leadership consultant and executive coach based in Portland, Oregon, USA. She designs and facilitates a variety of individual and group programs for corporate and non-profit clients. Her primary areas of focus include leadership develoment and executive coaching, intercultural communication in the workplace, multicultural work team effectiveness, and international assignments. Ann Marie has earned a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Arts degree in Intercultural Relations through Antioch University and the Intercultural Communication Institute. The focus of her masters thesis research was on factors that influence the business effectivenss of transferees from various countries working in the United States on temporary assignments.

Prior to starting her consulting business, Ann Marie worked for Nike, Inc. for 17 years. The majority of her work at Nike was in international advertising and marketing communications, with additional experience in leadership develoment and human resources. She has traveled extensively throughout Western Europe and Asia. In addition to several years at Nike's World Headquarters in Oregon, she worked at Nike's European Headquarters and lived in the Netherlands for 3 1/2 years, starting up and leading Nike's European retail marketing and merchandising departments. In this role she directly supervised Dutch, British, French and Algerian employees and led a team of managers from several European countries.

Ann Marie's recent consulting projects have included the design and faciliation of intercultural communication workshops for Nike, Inc., a comprehensive training assessment for Paccess, and the design and facilitation of a cultural competency program for St. Joseph's Shelter in Mt. Angel, Oregon. She is currently developing cultural orientation programs for two organizations, to help people from various countries that have recently arrived in the United States to accelerate their ability to work effectively in the U.S. American work environment and with their American colleagues.

In January, 2001, Ann Marie joined the faculty of the Winter Institute for Intercultural Communication at the Catholic University in Lille, France, where she teaches an annual 5-day course about "Working with U.S. Americans" to third-year students. She aslo teaches intercultural communicaton courses in the Masters Of International Management (M.I.M.) Program at Portland State University and the Master of Physician Assistant Studies Program at Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon, USA.

Ann Marie is qualified to administer and analyze the Intercultural Development Inventory (I.D.I.), which she has utilized in corporate and non-profit organizations to assess levels of intercultural sensitivity prior to training, and to evaluate the development of a group of participants in a leadership development program. She is accredited in the Insights Discovery System, an internationally validated personality profile system based on the work of Dr. Carl Jung, and is a board member of SIETAR USA, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research.

Marc is an Executive Coach and Organization Development professional with a long track record of successful engagements with C-level officers, senior executives, and technical leaders.  His executive coaching specialties include helping clients shift from technical leadership to enterprise leadership, devise and cascade strategy, lead change, enhance influence skills, and build relationships with key stakeholder groups.

Previously, Marc was a Co-Founder and Executive Vice-President of Customer Success at Scout OnDemand, a cloud-based enterprise coaching solution provider. In this role, he was responsible for developing and maintaining customer relationships and driving coaching effectiveness.

Before co-founding Scout OnDemand, Marc was a Principal at Linkage, Inc., where he led complex, multi-level client engagements in the areas of change management and executive team development.  In partnership with senior-level clients, Marc helped enhance company-wide leadership capabilities and improved individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.

Prior to joining Linkage, Marc was a Co-Founder and Principal of Cobalt Strategies, Inc., a boutique human capital consulting firm, where he specialized in leadership, organization development and change management.  Previously, Marc led the Western Division consulting team for The Forum Corporation, a global learning and consulting firm. 

Marc earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, now Alliant University.  He teaches graduate-level courses in leadership and organizational change at the University of San Francisco and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences.

Select Clients:
Marc’s clients include Activision/Blizzard, Adobe Systems, Allergan, Boeing, Cisco Systems, Danaher, Disney, DuPont, eBay, Edwards Lifesciences, Ernst & Young, Exxon/Mobil, Genentech, Fedex, Fluor, HSBC, Illumina, Independence Blue Cross, International Monetary Fund, Intuit, Invesco, JDS Uniphase, JPMorgan/Chase, Kaiser Permanente, KPMG, L3 Communications, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Macrovision, McKesson, Mentor Graphics, National Semiconductor, Nexa Technologies, Pacificorp, Petco, Pioneer Hi-Bred, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Providence Healthcare, Qualcomm, Raven Software, Red Octane, Salesforce.com, Siemens, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Standard Insurance, Symantec, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Toyota, Visa, WR Grace, and Wyndham Worldwide.

Marissa Peterson brings a broad senior executive portfolio to her board and executive coaching practice. She joined Sun Microsystems when it was still a small public company, helping it scale to reach a peak of approx. $20 Billion in annual revenues. She retired from Sun after 17 years in 2005 with an unprecedented legacy of concurrently leading some of Sun's largest and most effective organizations: as Executive Vice President of Services, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Operations, and Sun's Chief Customer Advocate.

As EVP of Sun Services, she developed and oversaw programs designed to help companies reduce the time, cost and risk of transforming their business. These programs leveraged technology to architect, implement and maintain customers' network computing infrastructures. As Chief Customer Advocate, Marissa resolved critical customer satisfaction issues while driving more sustained efforts – most notably the Sun Sigma program – to instill a "customer–first" ethic throughout the company. And as EVP of Sun's Worldwide Operations organization, Marissa guided Sun's supply chain, manufacturing and logistics programs and established an industry leadership position for high quality and cost-effective product execution to a global customer base.

Prior to joining Sun, Marissa worked as a management consultant at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and in various marketing, financial and engineering positions with Saturn Corporation and various GM divisions. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and an Honorary Doctorate in Management from Kettering University, and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard University.

Among her awards are the Sun Microsystems President's Excellence Award, Silicon Valley Tribute to Women and Industry, Kettering University Management Achievement Award, SF Business Times Top Women in Business, Filipinas Magazine Corporate Leader of the Year, the National Co-op Hall of Fame, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal's Most Influential Women, and the Excellence in Science and Engineering Award from the Philippine Development Forum.

Marissa currently serves on the Board of Directors of Humana ($40 Billion health benefits insurance company), Ansell ($1+ Billion Healthcare barrier protection company), Quantros (Healthcare IT) and the Lucille Packard Children's Hospital of Stanford. She also previously served on the Board of Directors of Supervalu, Covisint and was a Board Trustee of Kettering University.

Michael K. Sheehy has over 30 years of managerial and executive experience in a variety of organizations including large corporations, high tech start-ups, international enterprises, environmental organizations, and the military. His industry experiences range from enterprise computing to advanced technology components & services to the medical, military, and insurance market arenas.

Mr. Sheehy has held executive positions in general management, sales, service, and operations with companies such as Wang Laboratories, Kendall Square Research Corporation, Millipore Corporation, Sanmina-SCI, and DDi Global. During his business career, he has exercised leadership responsibility for organizations of up to 1500 people including operations in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Connecticut and a decorated veteran of the Viet Nam war, Mr. Sheehy earned his MBA at Boston College and completed several executive development programs at Harvard Business School and Cal Tech.

As an executive coach, the assets & capabilities that Mr. Sheehy brings to an engagement are:

• Successful real world operating experience in diverse organizations & industries and in a variety of roles.
• Embedded understanding of the demands, necessities, and trade-offs inherent in successfully navigating the corporate business universe; “how the game is played”, what it takes to win, and what pressures, conflicts, and ambiguities this creates for the players.
• Perceptiveness, honed intuition, acute listening & observation skills.
• Genuine empathy with people.
• Strong academic foundation.
• Confidence & credibility from highly diverse life experiences.
• Exceptional communication & relationship building skills

His particular interests are in working as a mentor and helping clients understand & come to terms with management/shareholder expectations and effectively dealing with organizational complexities.

His talents include helping clients understand how their styles are perceived in the work environment and what barriers and opportunities this creates for them. He is adept at guiding people through the challenges of conflict management, group leadership, and interpersonal communications.

Shawn Spano, Ph.D. is an associate with ExecutivEdge of Silicon Valley and a Senior Consultant with the Public Dialogue Consortium. Shawn has 25 years experience in higher education where he has developed his teaching and research interests in the areas of applied interpersonal communication and dialogue theory. For the past 15 years he has developed a communication consulting practice that successfully bridges the academic and corporate worlds. Shawn specializes in applying conceptual frameworks to enhance the communication and leadership performance of executives, managers, and teams in the public and private sectors. He is currently preparing to take a professional leave of absence from his position as Professor in the Communication Studies Department at San José State University to pursue consulting and executive coaching full time.

A key component of Shawn’s consulting work involves adapting cutting-edge ideas to meet the practical demands of his clients. His customized approach to working with individuals and teams is characterized by these qualities:

• Foregrounding communication in leadership, executive, and team development.
• Ongoing relationship building founded on mutual trust, respect, and confidentiality.
• The use of established tools to identify strengths and needs.
• The co-construction of performance outcomes and empirical markers of success.
• Benchmarking and assessment using quantitative and qualitative data.
• Real time coaching and training that maximizes learning in response to problem-solving situations that clients are in and decisions that they have to make.     
• Ensuring accountability through candid feedback that enables the coach-client relationship to thrive.

Shawn has worked with executives, senior managers, and leadership teams in a number of organizations, including multi-year projects with two different organizations. His client list includes the City of San José, City of Cupertino, Town of Los Gatos, City of Pismo Beach, International Coaching Federation, San José State University, Saint Mary’s College, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, Silicon Valley Commonwealth Club, the Community Coalition for End of Life Care. Shawn was selected “SJSU Outstanding Professor” in 2000, and has published numerous articles and chapters, including the book, Public Dialogue and Participatory Democracy: The Cupertino Community Project (Hampton Press, 2001).

Betty Till has over twenty years experience in leadership positions in business and healthcare. As Vice President of Corporate Communications and a member of the executive team at a variety of companies, Betty coached senior managers in crisis communications, developed corporate business and marketing strategies and communicated merger and acquisition goals and information to employees.

Betty provides executive coaching for individuals who are preparing for new leadership roles, transitioning into a new company and role, and those who want to increase their probability for success in their current role. Throughout her career she has coached and counseled managers and employees on effectively communicating, creating alliances, making choices and building positive relationships. She has a unique ability to build rapport with her clients. She works collaboratively with her clients to help them design the impact they want and to achieve specific outcomes in work and in life.

Betty is a Certified Professional Coach and is an Assessment Center Evaluator. She is qualified to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)©, 360 degree Benchmark© from the Center for Creative Leadership, the Lominger Choices Architect and Voices©, as well as the Organization Systems International Polaris 360 Survey. She has published articles in Healthcare Leadership and Management Report, EMS Manager and Supervisor and several other publications.

Her client companies include EmCare, Inc., Life Port, Inc., InnoVast, Warner Brothers/Reprise Records, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems.

With a BS in nursing from the University of Texas at Austin, Betty began her career as a Registered Nurse where she provided care for critically ill patients at a major trauma center. With her critical care background, she soon began teaching in the Allied Sciences Department at Austin Community College and pioneered one of the first Associate Degree programs for paramedics in 1980. She held a faculty position at Austin Community College for six years. She is currently a member of the International Coaches Federation, the Professional Coaches and Mentoring Association, the Institute of Management Consultants, the Professional Women's Chamber Connection, and an advisor to the Junior League of San Jose.