Courses
2023 Conversations at the Edge

Jennifer believes that leadership is one of the most vital renewable resources in the world. In this topsy-turvy time, when uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are raging, we need a new form of leadership for a new era. While it might be natural to experience these swirling currents of change as a threatening force to be survived or an inconvenience to be managed, those who will lead us into the future see complexity as the natural state of the world. These leaders use the forces of change to cultivate new possibilities for their people, their organisations, their communities, and the environment. If we want organisations where people are thriving and bringing their best, we need leaders who are learning. To that end, Jennifer designs and teaches leadership programs, coaches senior teams, and supports new ways of thinking about strategy and people. In her three highly acclaimed books, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, Simple Habits for Complex Times (co-authored with Keith Johnston), and Changing on the Job, Jennifer builds on deep theoretical knowledge to offer practical ways to make leaders’ work more meaningful and their lives more fun. Jennifer has worked with senior leaders in the private, non-profit, and government sectors around the world (like Novartis, Google, KPMG, Intel, Microsoft, Wikimedia, and the New Zealand Department of Conservation). Jennifer also supports executives one-on-one as a leadership coach. Over the last decade, Jennifer has developed the Growth Edge Coaching approach. She supports clients to find their current growing edge and then make choices about how they want to develop. She teaches coaches around the world transformational and developmental coaching approaches in her Growth Edge Coaching certification series. Jennifer speaks at leadership and coaching conferences, and she offers occasional courses for coaches at universities all over the world like Harvard University, the University of Sydney, and Oxford Brookes University. Jennifer has a masters and a doctorate from Harvard University. Eschewing work/life balance for a life that feels like fun across the board, Jennifer loves to write, to scuba dive, and to roll on the floor with her dogs. Formerly an associate professor at George Mason University, Jennifer learned about deep change more than a decade ago when she turned down the tenure offer and moved to a small seaside village in New Zealand with her husband, two kids, and the family dog. While she still considers herself a Kiwi by choice, Jennifer opened her European chapter when she and her family moved to central London in 2018.

Vernice believes that leaders can learn to expand their impact and agility through presence, connection, and awareness across contexts. With over 15 years of experience working with global Fortune 500 companies and large nonprofits, Vernice Jones creates experiential leadership programs and leadership development solutions that connect and drive business results. Vernice is a Director and Faculty of Adult Development at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. She is also an Associate (Coach, Facilitator, Consultant) at Cultivating Leadership, where she is currently co-faculty of The Leading Inclusively Lab. Vernice leverages her former experience as a diversity, equity, and inclusion leader in her work in the Leading Inclusively Lab and her work leading circles of executive women of color. Vernice designed and delivered a two-week curriculum and trained instructors for prospective students at Duke University’s prestigious Leadership Academy in North Carolina, Shanghai, and Beijing, China. Through her executive coaching business, she has been an executive and professional coach for clients in the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia. As a certified coach, Vernice Jones has completed coaching certification programs from the Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and Organizational and Relationship Systems Coaching through CRR Global. She is qualified to administer The Leadership Circle 360 profile and the Myers Briggs, MBTI. Vernice has been designated by the International Coaching Federation as an MCC (Master Certified Coach) and a mentor coach. Vernice graduated from the University of Maryland with an undergraduate degree in Economics. She also holds a Masters's degree in Finance and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Vernice has worked on a number of community development projects, including an Origami camp for girls in South Carolina, an English language program for Chinese seniors, and a program for church elders at a church with locations in South Africa, Zambia, and Nigeria.

Patrice believes that today’s world needs leaders who can thrive in complexity and that with the right support and challenge, they can grow the ability to do just that. To that end, she specialises in coaching, consulting, and facilitating programs that help coaches and leaders, individuals and groups, develop in ways that increase their fitness for both the complexity of work and the challenges of life. Patrice has worked with people all around the globe in many different industries, including technology, government services, not for profits, insurance, financial services, and consulting firms. Along with Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin, Patrice is one of the core faculty for the Growth Edge Coaching certification program. As a coach, Patrice believes clients thrive when they are supported to bring their whole selves to the table and then challenged to explore the unfamiliar territory of who they are becoming. Within individual or group coaching conversations and in leadership programs, her clients experience a better understanding of what has been true for them up until now, and they develop an expanded view of what is possible. She supports her clients to make lasting changes as they explore and push their growing edges. She facilitates the conversations that clients want to have—or the more difficult ones they need to have. Patrice loved being on the innovative leadership team of Cultivating Leadership for four years as they developed ways to work consciously with complexity principles and to walk their own talk. She is still Director of Cultivating Leadership Australia and has stepped off the leadership team to explore leadership from the edges of a system and to free up time for developing new ideas. With a Masters's in Organisational Psychology and registration with the Psychology Board of Australia, she is also deeply interested in neuroscience, the links between mind and body, and ways that we can heal and grow through applying complexity thinking to the complex adaptive system of us as humans. When not working, Patrice loves to spend time with her husband and three adult children and their partners and enjoying life with friends, especially if it involves being near or on the water and eating healthy and delicious food.

Carolyn Coughlin is passionate about supporting people, including the leaders with whom she works, not only to grow into their biggest selves but also to live as fully as they can. She was introduced to the idea of adult development about 15 years ago, shortly after leaving her career as a management consultant, and it was love at first sight. Carolyn believes that as the complexity of our world and our lives increases, it will be by paying greater attention to the ways we and our clients make sense of the world that we can uncover new ways to see differently, to be differently, to take different actions, and to live into the fullest version of ourselves and our lives—thereby expanding our possibilities to impact the world in increasingly positive ways. Carolyn has been an executive coach, facilitator, and leadership development specialist for over 15 years. Her journey began in the corporate world, where she was a management consultant, first at Price Waterhouse and later at McKinsey and Company. With her fellow Cultivating Leadership partner Jennifer, Carolyn co-designed and runs the Growth Edge Certification series, an endeavor that continues to provide her with endless joy and learning. She also has a keen interest in supporting women to step into leadership positions in greater numbers so that we might finally achieve the power parity toward which we’ve been (slowly) moving over the last century. She writes and talks about developmental coaching, why and how it can be such powerful support to growth, and how, in particular, she thinks it might hold promise for shifting the gender imbalance in our leadership ranks. Carolyn has also become increasingly interested in the role of the whole self, the realm of sensation and emotion, and how those, together with language, can be powerful ways into both noticing and intervening in our own and our clients’ meaning-making patterns–and she approaches her coaching and organizational work through that lens. Carolyn earned an A.B. in Economics from Brown University, an M.B.A. with distinction from the Wharton School, and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Certified Somatic Coach through the Strozzi Institute, a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Indicator, and a certified user of the Global Leadership Profile, the Leadership Circle, and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Carolyn, whose childhood family vacations included not trips to Disney, but week-long backpacking trips through the mountains of Wyoming, loves natural beauty and the outdoors second only to her family. She has lived and worked extensively in New Zealand and many countries in Latin America and currently lives with her husband on the campus of a boarding school outside Princeton, New Jersey, and spends her summers in a small cabin on a lake in the Catskills of New York State, where they are often joined by their three young adult children.

Rodney sees himself primarily as a facilitator of individual and collective growth. He brings an abiding interest in our journey of becoming to leadership and organisational development and is passionate about the importance of this work in assisting us to create meaning in our individual and collective endeavours. When first introduced to adult development and complexity practices, he felt as though he had finally discovered a language and way of thinking that he had been looking for all his life. Rodney has facilitated leadership and organisational development in global organisations and professional service firms for over two decades. Preferring to partner with clients over long periods, he develops bespoke approaches that enable leadership development and cultural evolution to occur simultaneously. Rodney worked as a medical doctor for over a decade. His career transition to become a facilitator, coach and educator were borne of a deep desire to work specifically with individual growth and organisational transformation. He is accredited with both The Leadership Circle and Human Synergistics suite of tools, is a certified coach with IECL, and is presently completing certification as a Growth Edge coach. He holds a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery from Monash University, Australia. Rodney loves to travel and the opportunity to immerse himself in different cultural landscapes. Closer to home, anything to do with gardening and constructing things out of wood helped ground him and keep him centered, while embedded in family life with three teenage young men.