Heidi Sparkes Guber

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Biographical Information

"Heidi Sparkes Guber has designed and delivered groundbreaking programs for thousands of people in over 25 years as a management and leadership consultant. Specializing in the application of vision and purpose to achieve strategic focus and breakthrough results, she has worked with a variety of organizations including J&L Steel, NMB (ING Bank), Engelhard, AT&T, UCB Pharma, Merck, Wells Fargo, Cisco Systems, Ford Motor Company and Ford Credit, Nissan Motor Company, ExxonMobil, the National Security Agency, IFC/World Bank and ABC Home.

"Ms. Guber directs, designs and delivers the Leadership in Change program for executive leaders and senior managers at UCB Pharma in Brussels, Belgium. This program is now in its ninth iteration as one of the top three leadership development programs at UCB. As part of the talent development team at UCB, Ms. Guber also designed and helped implement the Global Leadership Team annual meetings for the top 160 leaders of UCB. These interventions have supported UCB’s growth through two major mergers and a five-year transformation from being a 100-year old Belgian chemical, film and pharmaceutical company into a global biopharma company specializing in the treatment of life-threatening diseases.

"Since 2005, she has also been a senior program leader for the Nissan GET (Global Executive Training) program, the elite leadership development curriculum at the Nissan Management Institute in Hakone, Japan, where she also coaches advanced participants in action learning applications of numerous business perspectives and tools they learn. Her executive coaching clients have come from all department and region of Nissan Motor, Ltd.

"From 1992 – 2002, Ms. Guber developed the Breakthrough Leadership Process™ at Citibank, Bank One, Finance One, Ford Credit and Ford Motor Company. In cross divisional programs delivered for Ford Financial, Ford of South America, Ford of Europe, Volvo Car Corporation and Volvo Car Finance, Breakthrough Leadership program initiatives resulted in over $300 million in incremental corporate profits. As an integral part of these programs, Ms. Guber implemented a comprehensive leadership development and coaching process for senior executives and managers to help them achieve personal excellence while building high performance in their global teams...

"Guber has served as a certified trainer for Insight Education Systems in The Power of Small: MicroInequities, a new approach to diversity and leadership development based on the research of Mary Rowe at MIT. She regularly leads sessions for 20-250 participants in rganizations such as Merck, Wells Fargo, Cisco Systems and Lockheed Martin in the US. She has delivered sessions worldwide for Cisco, in Europe and Asia, including Spain, Italy, France, Great Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, India, Singapore, Korea and Australia. She also has designed and delivered the internal facilitator training programs for these companies. Ms. Guber has served on the Council of Trustees for the Society for Organizational Learning, a global community of educators, researchers and business leaders dedicated to the study and practice of systems thinking, organizational learning and learning-based leadership. As a consultant to SoL, she has facilitated the ongoing action learning and research collaboration of organizational members such as AT&T, DTE, Ford Motor Company, Harley-Davidson, IFC, Intel, NSA, Royal Dutch/Shell and Unilever. She also plays an active role in developing SoL communities of practice in consulting and executive coaching, where she serves on the design and delivery team for the new course Coaching from a Systems Perspective.

"While working with the Chairman and CEO of Ford Credit, Ms. Guber served as curriculum design director and guest lecturer for Driving Fundamental Change in Business: A CEO’s Perspective, an MBA course at the University of Michigan. She has guest lectured at the Institute for Women’s Leadership, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. She is now a contributing author to the recently published 2nd edition of The Change Handbook, a definitive resource on today’s best methods for engaging whole systems.

"Since 1977, Ms. Guber has been an investor and activist for The Hunger Project, which funds Strategic Planning in Action and leadership development programs for women elected to village leadership in South Asia and grass roots activists in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. She has also consulted to non-profit and social service organizations such as the International Dyslexia Association, National Center for Learning Disabilities and Omega Institute.

Ms. Guber received her BA from Duke University and a Master of Professional Studies in Creativity Development and Expressive Therapy from Pratt Institute, where she co-wrote the first program textbook, Symbolic Dialogues in the Therapeutic Encounter. She is married to filmmaker Zev Guber, with whom she produced Lost Ships, a 3-part special series on maritime archeology for TLC/Discovery Channel. She is the proud mother of Marisa, Elizabeth and Sarah Guber, whose emerging global citizenship are among her most rewarding personal endeavors."

Affiliations

• Trainer, Next Level