With each client engagement, our lead consultant assembles a teach of consultants who have the relevant experience, expertise, and background to work on the project. Most team members have worked with each other for year and on several different kinds of projects. All teams have developed a successful, collaborative culture of working together and with client systems.
OWNER AND LEAD CONSULTANT
H. Sharif Williams, Ph.D., M.Ed. Organizational Diagnostician, Social Systems Healer, and Change Agent
Dr. Williams reads the formal and
informal processes within institutions, the dynamics of teams, and the politics
of groups and assesses people’s ability to function at their best, feel good
about their work, and support a diverse workplace environment. He offers
clients the opportunity to engage in transformative learning as a path to
envision the future, embrace change, overcome challenges, heal breaches, and
create environments of social/ecological justice. Dr. Williams integrates
theory, methods, and solutions in human development and consciousness,
organization studies, adult education, cultural studies, and systems thinking
from around the world to provide an integral approach that works on multiple
levels: micro/macro, individual/collective, interpersonal/systemic, and
vertical/horizontal.
Dr. Williams is a masterful
facilitator with twenty-two years of experience. His presence is a
profound and powerful invitation to co-create a space of critical reflection,
deep meaning, creativity, focus, and engagement. Dr. Williams is a
superb observer and communicator. He is able to perceive even the
subtlest forces that greatly affect environments and communicate important
truths about those forces in ways that are understandable and actionable. Dr.
Williams is an excellent coach and counselor who encourages growth and
learning.
Dr. Williams is also a scholar-practitioner
with a theoretical background in organizations, social systems, and change as
well as a practical background as a professional. He holds two bachelor degrees
in political science and psychology,
a Master of Education degree with specialization in conflict resolution and
learning community development, a Ph.D. in human and
organizational systems with a concentration in transformative learning for
social justice, and has received training in Boalian
social change techniques, mediation, and body-mind
health.
During the last 15 years, Dr. Williams has
worked in the private and public sectors and the not-for profit community
(e.g., Partnership for Parks, New York University, Wildlife Conservation Society,
Park Slope Food Coop, Educators for Social Responsibility, and Aurora House).
Dr. Williams' work has included group dynamics training,
strategic planning, curriculum design and implementation, diversity/plurality
education, and popular education. He uses techniques from the theatrical world
to create profound, creative, and fun experiences for the participants.
Participants are often encouraged to participate in role-plays, exploratory
games, and active modeling of problems and situations.
Dr. Williams utilizes body-mind
techniques from the Chinese disciplines of tai chi chuan and chi gong and
Indian disciplines of yoga and pranayama (breathing techniques) as well as
traditional African concepts of consciousness, family, and community in his
work. Through the application of these techniques, Dr. Williams helps participants
become more conscious of themselves and their connections to the world. This
provides a more complete understanding of the problems and issues that people
face. In addition, participants are encouraged to use these techniques to
increase their personal power and maintain their personal health.
Dr. Williams has published articles on
the topic of organization culture and workplace politics as a former columnist
for the nationally distributed magazine, ARISE. He also co-guest edited a special double issue of Tamara Journal for Critical Organizational Inquiry. Dr. Williams is a professor of interdisciplinary studies and socially engaged arts at Goddard College and adjunct associate professor of applied theatre research at the School of Professional Studies of the City University of New York.
