GRACE under Pressure John Baldoni

Teresa M. Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, at Harvard Business School. Her most recent book, Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You, presents insights from a decade of research on the psychological, social, and life restructuring challenges of retiring. Her colleagues Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas T. Hall, and Kathy E. Kram collaborated on that work. Before turning her research interests to the retirement transition, Teresa devoted over 40 years to researching creativity and innovation. She was instrumental in establishing the social psychology of creativity – the study of how the social environment can influence creative behavior, primarily by influencing motivation. Her research on creativity appears in her books, Creativity in Context and Growing Up Creative, as well as numerous articles for scholars and practitioners. Extending that research, she studied how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their creativity, productivity, commitment, and collegiality, by affecting inner work life – the confluence of motivation, emotions, and perceptions. The findings of that research appear in her coauthored book (with Steven Kramer), The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. 

Teresa’s work has appeared in over 100 scholarly journal articles and a variety of other outlets, including Harvard Business Review, as well as several edited books. She has presented her work to audiences in a variety of settings, including Pixar, Genentech, TEDx Atlanta, Apple, Pfizer, and The World Economic Forum in Davos. She consults to companies and nonprofits and has served on a number of boards. She has received a variety of awards, including the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s Organizational Behavior Division, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israel Organizational Behavior Conference, an honorary doctorate from BI Norwegian Business School, and election to the 2024 Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. www.retiringbook.com

Kim B. Clark joined the Harvard faculty in 1978 and served as dean of the faculty at Harvard Business School from 1995 to 2005. He also served as the fifteenth president of Brigham Young University-Idaho from 2005 to 2015, Commissioner of Education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2015 to 2019, and is Distinguished Professor of Management at Brigham Young University.

Mary Olson-Menzel has over 30 years of leadership across media, tech, healthcare, and many other industries globally. She is the Founder and CEO of MVP Executive Development, a national leadership, coaching, and organizational management consultancy with offices in Connecticut, New York, and Illinois. Her clients range from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups with a broad reach of industries from FinTech to Football (the NFL). As a seasoned executive leadership coach, Mary works with both companies and individuals to unlock the potential that improves business performance and catalyzes growth. Her coaching methods bring a fresh lens to business and a perspective that nurtures teamwork and helps drive results through grace, empathy, and "Humane Leadership". 

Before starting her company in 2012, Mary was a partner at two leading global executive search firms. She also spent a decade at Tribune Company in Chicago as National Managing Director of Talent, leading a team of 40+ human capital professionals. This is where her understanding and expertise in recruiting and coaching were honed. She worked closely with 20 newspapers, 27 television stations, and hundreds of digital assets across the country to attract and retain the best and the brightest. In her early years, Mary worked in both the tech space and media and entertainment, where she started her career as a television reporter. 

Driven by an innate curiosity and a deep passion for her work, Mary has dedicated her life to helping leaders at all levels channel what “lights them up” and inspires them into more fulfilling and successful personal and professional journeys. Mary earned her MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Public Relations from Illinois State University.

Mary currently lives in Westchester, NY, with her husband, three kids, and their Goldendoodle, Wrigley. She is a part of Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, which brings together the world's leading executive coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, iconic leaders, and entrepreneurs. Mary volunteers for various charities locally as well. Her newest book is “What Lights You Up? Illuminate Your Path and Take the Next Big Step in Your Career.” www.maryolsonmenzel.com

Frank Andre Guridy is an award-winning historian and the author of three books. He is a history and African American studies professor and the executive director of the Eric H. Holder Institute for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University. His newest book is “The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest and Play.” https://history.columbia.edu/person/guridy-frank/

Terence Mauri is a global expert on the future of leadership, AI, and disruption. As founder of the future trends think tank Hack Future Lab and an acclaimed author, Mauri spearheaded a movement for leaders to find the upside of disruption and rethink leadership for a post-AI world. Mauri’s actionable insights and bold thinking have been featured in The Economist, Forbes, Inc. BBC, Reuters, Business Insider, and The Drucker Forum. He has been described as “an influential and outspoken expert on the future of leadership” by Thinkers50, the global authority on today’s top business thinkers. Follow Terence on Twitter/X @terencemauri or visit www.terencemauri.com.

Anne Chow was the first woman and first woman of color to hold the position of CEO at AT&T Business in 2019, overseeing more than 35,000 employees who collectively served 3 million business customers worldwide during her time there. She is currently the Lead Director on the board of Franklin Covey, serves on the board of 3M and CSX, and teaches at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Here are sample clips on Harvard Business Review’s Race at Work, WFAA and MSNBC. Her newest book is LEAD BIGGER: The Transformative Power of Inclusion  Her website is www.theannechow.com

Travis Rieder, PhD, is a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he directs the Master of Bioethics degree program. He holds secondary appointments in the departments of Philosophy and Health Policy and Management, as well as the Center for Public Health Advocacy. His first book, a memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal, was named an NPR Best Book of 2019, and his TED Talk on the same topic has been viewed more than 2.5 million times. He has been interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air and his opinion writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, and Psychology Today. www.travisrieder.com

Steve Almond is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. Almond is the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Steve cohosted the Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed for four years, and teaches Creative Writing at the Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and Wesleyan. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his family and his anxiety.

One of Canada’s highest-rated clinical psychologists, Dr. Monica Vermani is a public speaker, teacher, and author in the field of mental health and wellness. In her private practice, Dr. Vermani provides a multi-faceted treatment approach in treating adolescents and adults suffering from trauma/abuse, mood, anxiety, substance addictions, and other related conditions and disorders, as well as family and couples therapy. She employs a dynamic range of techniques and evidence-based treatment modalities, including psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, (CBT), Mindfulness Meditation – Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)/Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Breath~Body~Mind (BBM), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming (EMDR).

Dr. Vermani’s Start Living Corporate Wellness programs were created out of her belief in the importance of good mental health in the workplace. Start Living Corporate Wellness programs support and facilitate individuals’ efforts to overcome the barriers that prevent them from living their best and most authentic life.

Dr. Vermani’s game-changing Start Living Corporate Wellness programs address the underlying mental health issues that impact individual employees and teams. Through a dynamic suite of psycho-education, training, and support, Start Living Corporate Wellness programs keep employees engaged, supported, happy, and whole.

Dr. Vermani believes that good mental health doesn’t just happen, that it deserves the same time, attention, understanding, and effort as our physical wellbeing. To that end, Dr. Vermani’s latest book, A Deeper Wellness, and its companion online A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons mental health program provide the tools to create a deep, authentic sense of wellness and wellbeing. Drawing from her 25 years of clinical practice, she takes readers through the same tried and true multi-disciplinary approach to treatment that has been successful in creating incremental, meaningful change for hundreds of patients and groups. Dr. Vermani has placed her expertise in media outlets including Parade, Vitamin Shoppe, CTV Northern Ontario, HIVE, Hamilton Today With Scott Thompson, and Radio-Canada, The Globe and Mail, Shondaland, HuffPost, and Well and Good. https://www.drmonicavermani.com

Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. His newest book is “The Problem with Change.” www.ashleygoodall.com