About

My story

I began my life’s work in two communities on opposite sides of Boston, one predominantly Black, the other predominantly White, both made up of hard-working, low-income families. For twelve years, I worked alternately as a community organizer, a journalist, and a counselor alongside people struggling to navigate circumstances largely stacked against them. Where they went, I went—to their homes, their schools, the streets, the courts, even prison. The experience was a master class in hard-earned resilience on the one hand and learned helplessness on the other.

That experience eventually led me to return to school to figure out how to inspire and empower people to create systems that work for them, not against them. As an undergraduate at Boston University and as a doctoral student at Harvard, I had the privilege of learning from and working alongside some of the world’s best thinkers on how to navigate conflict and effect change in all kinds of systems from families (David Kantor) to organizations (Chris Argyris, Donald Schön, Ed Schein, Peter Senge) to nations (Howard Zinn, Roger Fisher).

For the past 40 years, I have led long-term change efforts in some of America’s most iconic businesses and cutting-edge nonprofits. Along the way, I discovered that it is possible to turn intergroup conflict into a powerful force for constructive change. Out of this fundamental insight, I developed an approach to conflict and change called Leading Through Relationships (LTR)™ with frameworks and tools captured in my own and others publications and used around the world by my colleagues and students.

In addition to dozens of articles, I am the author of Divide Or Conquer, The Elephant in the Room, and Remaking the Space Between Us, and the co-author of Action Science with Chris Argyris and Robert Putnam. As a partner at the Monitor Group, I chaired Monitor University, and as chief executive partner at New Profit, I led a culture change effort that readied the firm for future growth.

I share my life with negotiation expert and Getting to Yes co-author Bruce Patton, my husband of 30 years, a rambunctious border collie rescue, and a junkyard mutt. If we can make our marriage and cross-species family work, we can make America work.